Farley says Cabo Star replacement plan submitted to cabinet

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine says a re­place­ment for the MV Cabo Star, the roll-on/roll-off fer­ry that has served To­ba­go’s in­ter-is­land seabridge since 2017, has been iden­ti­fied and sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for ap­proval. The cur­rent ves­sel’s con­tract, man­aged by Bridge­mans Ser­vices Group, ends on Jan­u­ary 12, 2026, and will not be re­newed.

“We have an eval­u­a­tion team that re­turned from Spain and Greece last week and I am go­ing to Cab­i­net this Thurs­day to present to Cab­i­net the op­tion that those that did the eval­u­a­tion said we should go with,” Au­gus­tine said at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing last night. He added that the pro­posed ves­sel could have “as much as 100 cab­ins be­cause we lis­ten to your stake­hold­ers.”

Au­gus­tine re­ject­ed claims that the gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to con­ceal the Cabo Star’s de­par­ture, say­ing dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers be­gan months ago. “A con­ver­sa­tion was had with the stake­hold­ers on June 11, 2025, right in my of­fice… They ac­tu­al­ly said to the min­is­ter this is what we want. Go and find a boat that can re­flect what we ac­tu­al­ly want.”

He said the tran­si­tion has been care­ful­ly man­aged. “More than that, in Ju­ly when the car­go boat went on dry dock, it was prob­a­bly the first time the car­go boat went on dry dock with­out a lot of back and all and con­fu­sion in the space, be­cause the first time a gov­ern­ment sat down and put prop­er mea­sures in place to treat with the re­moval of the car­go boat and to en­sure To­ba­go con­tin­ued to have stocks and sup­plies.”

Au­gus­tine said he ex­pects the Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John, to over­see the tran­si­tion. “I very much ex­pect that Ms. John must have a tran­si­tion­ing plan… More than that, cab­i­net will make the fi­nal de­ci­sions and we will be du­ly in­formed.”

He al­so ac­cused the op­po­si­tion of try­ing to politi­cise the mat­ter. “So you see when PNM want to de­ceive peo­ple, they’ll take a thing, twist it, spin it all out, re­peat it and hope that the lies stick… If you want a bet­ter cam­paign, find a bet­ter leader and find bet­ter can­di­dates and then come again. But in this elec­tion, you ain’t ready yet.”

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