RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Even though Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young says the Ce­dros port is op­er­a­tional, three Venezue­lan fer­ries are still await­ing clear­ance to come to the Ce­dros port with 86 le­git­i­mate pas­sen­gers.

A source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said up to noon on Tues­day, the ves­sels Vir­gen de Valle from Guiria which car­ried 28 pas­sen­gers, an­oth­er ves­sel named Vir­gen de Valle from Tu­cu­pi­ta car­ry­ing 30 pas­sen­gers and Po­sei­don car­ry­ing 18 pas­sen­gers failed to dock at the Ce­dros port.

Even though the ves­sels had clear­ance to leave Venezuela, the source said bro­kers ad­vised them that they had no clear­ance to come to Trinidad.

"No ves­sels are com­ing in to­mor­row again. Im­mi­gra­tion said they would not be at­tend­ing to any ves­sel un­til they get writ­ten word from the Coast Guard, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer that the ves­sels can re­sume sail­ings," the source added.

At the Ce­dros port on Tues­day, more than a dozen Venezue­lans were wait­ing to go back to Venezuela on the fer­ry.

Coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros, Shankar Teelucks­ingh said many peo­ple left their fam­i­lies in Venezuela to come to Trinidad to get ba­sic food items.

He said pre­vent­ing the ar­rival of le­git­i­mate fer­ries was mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.

"Why are they in­ter­fer­ing with the Venezue­lans who are try­ing to get here legal­ly. Why not con­cen­trate all ef­forts on stop­ping il­le­gal en­try and let the fer­ries con­tin­ue their nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ties?" Teelucks­ingh said.

He added, "How do they ex­pect le­git­i­mate pas­sen­gers to get back to Venezuela?"

The T&T Coast Guard has not an­swered queries from Guardian Me­dia about why the fer­ries are not be­ing al­lowed to dock.

Mean­while, sev­er­al busi­ness­es in Ce­dros said the bar­ring of Venezue­lan fer­ries has af­fect­ed busi­ness op­er­a­tions in Ce­dros.

Burt Be­har­ry said some of the Venezue­lans come to the su­per­mar­kets and shops to make pur­chas­es of flour, rice, milk, di­a­pers and oth­er goods. How­ev­er, he said since ac­tiv­i­ties slowed down at the port, busi­ness has al­so slowed.