Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Truck­ers are in a buoy­ant mood fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day aboard the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny as it sailed from Port-of-Spain to Scar­bor­ough.

It was the first time Au­gus­tine took a jour­ney on the car­go boat, which he had pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed as prophet­ic, com­par­ing its name to the colour (blue) and sym­bol (an­chor) of the To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty, which he leads.

It has not been smooth sail­ing since the boat's ar­rival on Jan­u­ary 22, with truck­ers and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty com­plain­ing bit­ter­ly about the ves­sel last month.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing sea tri­als, the US$25,000 per day boat has set­tled in­to a week­ly sched­ule, and sup­plies in To­ba­go have nor­malised.

Truck­ers As­so­ci­a­tion head Nicholas Man­swell told Guardian Me­dia last night, "The meet­ing was very fruit­ful in terms of se­cur­ing To­ba­go's best in­ter­est at heart."

Among the con­cerns raised were the air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem on the ves­sel as well as the turn­around time af­ter ar­riv­ing in To­ba­go.

The ves­sel left Trinidad at 2 pm yes­ter­day and ar­rived in To­ba­go at 8 pm. It was sched­uled to de­part at 11 pm last night.

Man­swell said there will be a round­table fol­low-up meet­ing next.

"There will be some changes com­ing to make truck­ers more com­fort­able on their jour­ney to and from To­ba­go."

He de­scribed the sail­ing as "not that bad" and thanked Au­gus­tine for fa­cil­i­tat­ing them.

Au­gus­tine left the port with his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail with­out speak­ing to the me­dia.