John: Regional inter-ferry system not main priority for T&T

The Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment says its main pri­or­i­ty now is to fix the in­ter-is­land fer­ry sys­tem be­tween the two is­lands, even as it ac­knowl­edged the on­go­ing ef­forts to cre­ate a re­gion­al trans­port sys­tem in­ter­con­nect­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Mem­ber States.

“Our first or­der of the day is to get that sea bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go as right as we could get it,” said Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John.

Min­is­ter John was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the head­quar­ters of the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) on Sun­day (Feb­ru­ary 8, 2026).

“We would love to do the re­gion­al fer­ry, but that is not be­fore the Cab­i­net at this time or even be­fore the board of the Port Au­thor­i­ty,” she told re­porters.

“So, it is some­thing I am sure will hap­pen,” she said, in­sist­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the re­gion­al fer­ry sys­tem “has not been scrapped”.

“No, not at all, not at all,” she as­sert­ed.

Min­is­ter John al­so dis­closed at the news con­fer­ence that the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) had re­ceived 965 Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est sub­mis­sions for projects list­ed with­in the gov­ern­ment’s sweep­ing Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print.

Con­nect Caribe, a sub­sidiary of Bar­ba­di­an mar­itime com­pa­ny Pleion Group Inc—which said it had been work­ing on a re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice—had an­nounced plans to be­gin its re­gion­al fer­ry sail­ings with­in the first quar­ter of 2025.

The com­pa­ny, which had ini­tial­ly giv­en an Au­gust 2024 dead­line, said then that the un­suit­abil­i­ty of the rec­om­mend­ed ves­sels, among oth­er things, led to the de­lay.

Con­nect Caribe said that this would in­clude three ves­sels—an 800-pas­sen­ger cruise ship, a 400-pas­sen­ger fast fer­ry and a ded­i­cat­ed car­go ves­sel—with plans to in­clude An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vin­cent and Trinidad and To­ba­go routes.

The ini­tia­tive by Con­nect Caribe is sep­a­rate from the on­go­ing work by the gov­ern­ments of Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­mence a new fer­ry ser­vice among the three Caribbean states.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter John told re­porters that a num­ber of coun­tries—in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, France, the Nether­lands, In­dia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Pe­ru, South Africa, Bel­gium and Chi­na—had ex­pressed some in­ter­est in the129 projects un­der 12 de­vel­op­ment nodes the gov­ern­ment un­veiled in its mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment pro­gramme last De­cem­ber.

She said she had re­ceived a let­ter from the UDe­COTT’s chair­man, Shankar Bidaisee, in­form­ing her of what she said was a very com­pet­i­tive process.

Ac­cord­ing to that let­ter, there have been dou­ble dig­it sub­mis­sions for each cat­e­go­ry list­ed in the plan, rang­ing from lux­u­ry wa­ter­front re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment to na­tion­al pris­ons se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

“This was a blowout for Trinidad and To­ba­go. We po­si­tioned our­selves well,” Min­is­ter John said.

She added: “I was very sur­prised about this be­cause I felt the so­cial projects, those that may be linked with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or the so­cial­ly dis­placed in the hos­pi­tals to an ex­tent, were not go­ing to be tak­en up, but we got 54 sub­mis­sions.” —PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)