Minister insists seabridge operational; groups call for permanent solution

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

As To­ba­go’s trans­porta­tion woes once again dom­i­nate na­tion­al at­ten­tion, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John has stepped for­ward to de­fend the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the lat­est dis­rup­tions. Her de­fence comes as the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) in­ten­si­fies its call to end what it de­scribes as a decades-long “eco­nom­ic and so­cial em­bar­go” on the is­land caused by what it calls un­re­li­able air and seabridge ser­vices.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the TH­TA ar­gued that chron­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty in in­ter­is­land trans­port has re­peat­ed­ly crip­pled To­ba­go’s tourism-dri­ven econ­o­my, un­der­mined in­vestor con­fi­dence, and erod­ed the qual­i­ty of life for res­i­dents.

“Res­i­dents, work­ers, stu­dents, pa­tients, and vis­i­tors are rou­tine­ly bur­dened by the anx­i­ety of not know­ing whether they can trav­el, re­turn home, at­tend med­ical ap­point­ments, or plan busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty with con­fi­dence. This un­cer­tain­ty erodes qual­i­ty of life, dam­ages in­vestor con­fi­dence, in­creas­es op­er­a­tional costs for tourism busi­ness­es, and sup­press­es eco­nom­ic growth.

“This sit­u­a­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling giv­en that bil­lions of dol­lars have been in­vest­ed in na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture over the years, in­clud­ing ma­jor air­port de­vel­op­ment, yet no com­pre­hen­sive, long-term so­lu­tion ap­pears to have been im­ple­ment­ed to se­cure re­li­able air and sea con­nec­tiv­i­ty for To­ba­go,” the TH­TA out­lined.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, John was adamant that the “seabridge did not col­lapse,” as she in­sist­ed that es­sen­tial op­er­a­tions on the seabridge con­tin­ued de­spite me­chan­i­cal set­backs.

“We al­ways had boats on the seabridge,” she said, stress­ing that the move­ment of food and es­sen­tial prod­ucts was nev­er in­ter­rupt­ed. “There was nev­er no pile-up of food­stuffs or any­thing on the port. Those things were giv­en pri­or­i­ty.”

John ac­knowl­edged de­lays for cer­tain cat­e­gories of goods—in­clud­ing ce­ment, oxy­gen, poul­try, and haz­ardous ma­te­ri­als—but not­ed that a barge had al­ready been de­ployed and be­gan op­er­a­tions this past week to ease car­go flow.

The min­is­ter al­so de­tailed the cause of the most re­cent dis­rup­tion.

“The Spir­it, the en­gine sucked in a piece of wood and some net. We had no con­trol over that. It was ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate,” John said as she al­so as­sured that the Blue Wave ves­sel en­coun­tered prob­lems dur­ing a sea tri­al, but cor­rec­tive mea­sures were un­der­way to re­store full ca­pac­i­ty.

“The Buc­coo Reef is sup­posed to be back on the bridge by next week Tues­day… so that has a ca­pac­i­ty of about 948 pas­sen­gers and about 200 ve­hi­cles. And then the big bad Blue Wave will come out next week by Wednes­day or Thurs­day. That will bring back the re­li­a­bil­i­ty on the bridge,” the min­is­ter added.

She al­so em­pha­sised that the sit­u­a­tion did not mir­ror the 2017 col­lapse of the seabridge un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, stat­ing, “It con­tin­ued to work. We put on ex­tra sail­ings. The Galleons Pas­sage that car­ries over 900 pas­sen­gers was car­ry­ing 1,800 pas­sen­gers a day be­cause both boats were do­ing two sail­ings per day.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing pub­lic wor­ry, John as­sured that the mat­ter would be re­solved prompt­ly. “I un­der­stand the anx­i­ety, but that will be re­solved by next week. The barge is on, and the barge is car­ry­ing a lot of stuff.”

Maen­while, per­tain­ing to in­ter­im car­go arrange­ments, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) ex­plained that a barge has been se­cured as an in­ter­im mea­sure, and it ar­rived in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day morn­ing car­ry­ing its first load of con­struc­tion and heavy car­go (over 7,000 kgs).

The PATT said it pri­ori­tised the move­ment of per­ish­able goods and es­sen­tial sup­plies to min­imise dis­rup­tion to To­ba­go’s sup­ply chain over the last three weeks.

The PATT fur­ther not­ed that the Buc­coo Reef would be rein­tro­duced to ser­vice from Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 9, 2026, ac­com­mo­dat­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 948 pas­sen­gers and 160 ve­hi­cles. The Galleons Pas­sage and APT James con­tin­ue to op­er­ate on ad­just­ed sched­ules.

The T&T Spir­it re­mains out of ser­vice cur­rent­ly for re­pairs, as the PATT urges trav­ellers to mon­i­tor the of­fi­cial chan­nels.

On the broad­er con­cerns raised by the TH­TA, the PATT said the in­tro­duc­tion of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, de­spite the set­back dur­ing sea tri­als, forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er strat­e­gy to re­vi­talise the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice.

This in­clud­ed strength­ened co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the PATT, NID­CO, and the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, with a fo­cus on im­prov­ing ves­sel avail­abil­i­ty, op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­i­ty, and over­all ser­vice ef­fi­cien­cy.

The PATT al­so not­ed the TH­TA’s call for en­gage­ment with tourism and pri­vate-sec­tor stake­hold­ers, as­sur­ing that it re­mains open to con­struc­tive di­a­logue as part of the on­go­ing re­form ef­fort, and recog­nis­es the val­ue of in­put from the com­mu­ni­ties and in­dus­tries that de­pend on the sea bridge.

The PATT ad­vised the pub­lic that, be­yond the im­me­di­ate op­er­a­tional mea­sures out­lined above, the Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing a long-term so­lu­tion to in­ter-is­land car­go trans­porta­tion—one that moves the coun­try away from its his­tor­i­cal re­liance on leased ves­sels to­ward na­tion­al own­er­ship.

The PATT added that NID­CO is cur­rent­ly ad­vanc­ing a phased ap­proach to se­cur­ing re­li­able, pur­pose-built car­go ca­pac­i­ty for the sea bridge.

The TH­TA, how­ev­er, main­tained that To­ba­go re­quires a per­ma­nent, struc­tural­ly sound trans­porta­tion frame­work—not a se­ries of short-term re­spons­es to re­cur­ring crises.

The as­so­ci­a­tion urged the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers to im­ple­ment a long-term, re­silient so­lu­tion.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has voiced strong sup­port for the TH­TA, echo­ing its con­cerns over the long-stand­ing chal­lenges af­fect­ing To­ba­go’s air and sea con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

The cham­ber’s pres­i­dent, Cur­tis Williams, said the is­sues high­light­ed re­flect­ed “a struc­tur­al weak­ness” that has hin­dered To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial progress for decades.

“For decades, un­re­li­able trans­porta­tion links be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go have con­strained busi­ness op­er­a­tions, dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains, dis­cour­aged in­vest­ment and placed un­due strain on res­i­dents, work­ers, stu­dents and vis­i­tors alike. From a pri­vate-sec­tor per­spec­tive, this un­cer­tain­ty trans­lates di­rect­ly in­to high­er op­er­at­ing costs, lost rev­enue op­por­tu­ni­ties, and di­min­ished con­fi­dence in To­ba­go as a place to do busi­ness,” Williams stat­ed.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture have tak­en steps to mit­i­gate re­cent trans­porta­tion dis­rup­tions—through in­ter­im ves­sels and oth­er con­tin­gency mea­sures—Williams stressed that such in­ter­ven­tions re­main re­ac­tive.