Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Thir­ty cab­ins were made avail­able to truck­ers aboard yes­ter­day’s sail­ing of the MV Gold­en Car­ri­er from Trinidad to To­ba­go.

T&T Seabridge Truck­ers Ltd pres­i­dent Nicholas Man­swell con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment, not­ing some of the cab­ins can ac­com­mo­date up to four peo­ple.
The Gold­en Car­ri­er has 70 cab­ins, three few­er than the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, which was with­drawn from ser­vice in Ju­ly for main­te­nance and up­grades.

Truck­ers had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about in­ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion aboard the Blue Wave de­spite the ves­sel hav­ing 73 cab­ins. The Gold­en Car­ri­er con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der a US$25,000-per-day char­ter agree­ment.

Man­swell said they have been work­ing close­ly with the Port Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure truck­ers are com­fort­able dur­ing the in­ter-is­land jour­ney.

The is­sue gained re­newed at­ten­tion on Tues­day when PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis crit­i­cised the treat­ment of truck­ers af­ter post­ing a video show­ing sev­er­al of them sleep­ing on the floor aboard the ves­sel.

De­spite the Port Au­thor­i­ty de­scrib­ing the Gold­en Car­ri­er as a su­pe­ri­or ves­sel, truck­ers say their ac­com­mo­da­tion arrange­ments have not im­proved.

In a Face­book post on Tues­day, Cud­joe-Lewis called on the Port Au­thor­i­ty to say why cab­in al­lo­ca­tions were not reg­u­larised.

“Why are our hard­work­ing truck­ers, busi­ness­men, hus­bands and sons be­ing re­duced to this?” she asked.

She al­so claimed truck­ers were told not to sleep on the floor.

“So where ex­act­ly are they sup­posed to sleep? In those hard chairs from 11 pm to 6 am?” she ques­tioned.

She ac­cused the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of re­main­ing silent while To­bag­o­ni­ans were be­ing dis­re­spect­ed.

“Our THA ad­min­is­tra­tion and their UNC friends in Trinidad told To­bag­o­ni­ans that this ves­sel was an im­prove­ment. The Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port would now have us be­lieve that what we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is some­how nor­mal,” she said.

She called on Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and To­ba­go MPs David Thomas and Joel Samp­son to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“Some­body has to stand up for To­ba­go. Some­body has to speak up for our peo­ple. And bet your bot­tom dol­lar I will. The PNM will. And right-think­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans should not be afraid to speak up too,” she said.

Ques­tions to the Port Au­thor­i­ty and Au­gus­tine on the sit­u­a­tion re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.