TOBAGO RUNS LOW ON SUPPLIES

STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The T&T Cham­ber of Busi­ness and Com­merce has warned To­bag­o­ni­ans to brace for po­ten­tial price in­creas­es, fol­low­ing a five-week dis­rup­tion to car­go ser­vice on the seabridge.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said its mem­bers are reel­ing with the com­mer­cial blow and are suf­fer­ing loss­es dai­ly, adding there is tremen­dous pres­sure to main­tain cur­rent prices. It added that its mem­bers have com­plained bit­ter­ly about an in­abil­i­ty to get goods on time and an ad­e­quate sup­ply due to the cur­rent in­ad­e­qua­cy of the fer­ry ser­vice.

The cham­ber said the de­lay in get­ting the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny car­go ves­sel ful­ly op­er­a­tional is caus­ing a lo­gis­ti­cal night­mare and dri­ving up op­er­a­tional costs.

It said wait times at the port for truck­ers have been pro­longed, with turn­around cy­cles now tak­ing up to 52 hours. This has caused a de­cline of car­go move­ment from five sail­ings week­ly to three. The cham­ber said per­ish­able goods are al­so in dan­ger of be­ing spoiled ow­ing to in­ad­e­quate re­frig­er­a­tion on the avail­able fer­ries.

“These fac­tors are dis­rupt­ing in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment, in­creas­ing op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es, strain­ing fleet ca­pac­i­ty and plac­ing di­rect pres­sure on prices and sup­ply re­li­a­bil­i­ty in To­ba­go,” the cham­ber said.

Not­ing the com­mer­cial blow the is­land is fac­ing, it ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment for an ur­gent meet­ing with stake­hold­ers.

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged the prob­lem, say­ing the con­struc­tion in­dus­try is al­so suf­fer­ing. He said he was seek­ing to speak with Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion.

“The de­lays cer­tain­ly re­main a con­cern for the THA...I just met with my team at Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed and they have some de­lay in get­ting bi­tu­men up from Trinidad. So, de­spite our best ef­forts, there will nat­u­ral­ly be an im­pact on the de­liv­ery of some ser­vices.”

The THA re­ceived an ex­port li­cense from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in No­vem­ber last year to al­low for Stud­ley Park to ex­port its prod­uct.

An em­ploy­ee at a promi­nent hard­ware store in Scar­bor­ough told the Guardian Me­dia that it is cur­rent­ly run­ning low on sand, ce­ment and blocks. Asked when the short­age of sup­plies be­gan, the man said, “As that (Cabo Star) boat leave.”

The Cabo Star’s lease end­ed on Jan­u­ary 12, paving the way for the ar­rival of the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny on Jan­u­ary 22. How­ev­er, dur­ing sea tri­als, rough seas re­port­ed­ly caused it to dam­age its hull on the jet­ty in To­ba­go, leav­ing the is­land with a di­min­ished sup­ply of many es­sen­tial items, since the oth­er fer­ries on the ser­vice can­not price the type of ca­pac­i­ty for heavy car­go need­ed.

“We can’t get trucks up to main­tain sup­ply, even with small hard­ware items. Even though the Galleons Pas­sage has been work­ing, it’s been hard to get tick­ets. Every day you have to line up for sev­er­al hours to com­pete with hun­dreds of oth­er truck­ers try­ing to get on board,” an of­fi­cial of an­oth­er hard­ware said.

Asked to quan­ti­fy the loss­es since the dis­rup­tion, she said, “There has been about a $15,000 drop in sales dai­ly.”

She said the hard­ware was not cur­rent­ly con­tem­plat­ing rais­ing prices and would in­stead ab­sorb “the brunt of the loss­es.”

Asked her view of Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the tran­si­tion be­tween car­go ves­sels, she said, “For me, there has been a mis­man­age­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. The pro­vi­sions in place have not been enough.”

She said even be­fore Car­ni­val, ba­sic items such as food and wa­ter were lack­ing on the is­land.

“You could not get a Kiss bread on the shelf in the su­per­mar­ket.”

Mean­while, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Mac Lean sound­ed the alarm over po­ten­tial dam­age to the tourism in­dus­try. He said hote­liers have had to re­vise their menus based on what­ev­er goods are avail­able. Mac Lean, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Blue Wa­ters Inn, said some guests are even call­ing ho­tels ask­ing if they have enough food to feed them for the du­ra­tion of their stay.

“The sup­ply chain has been com­pro­mised. You can’t get a lot of items in To­ba­go. I don’t think a lot of bars in To­ba­go are open­ing be­cause they can’t get prod­ucts to sell. So it’s not just the ho­tels, it’s the bars as well. We haven’t had draft beer for the last three weeks, and that is a very big sell­er,” he said.

“You can’t run a busi­ness in To­ba­go with this kind of thing. You need dif­fer­ent prod­ucts like lamb, you need cheese, and you can’t get it.”

Mac Lean said the au­thor­i­ties need to sort out the is­sue forth­with.

“They need to shape up or get out be­cause they not do­ing such a good job right now.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Port Au­thor­i­ty said the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny re­sumed sail­ing on Feb­ru­ary 10 and is car­ry­ing car­go dur­ing its sea tri­als. It said it is be­ing sup­port­ed by the Galleons Pas­sage, APT James and Buc­coo Reef pas­sen­ger ves­sels. The au­thor­i­ty in­sist­ed it has been meet­ing the de­mand on each of the sched­uled sail­ings. It said from Feb­ru­ary 11-18, there were 43 sail­ings on the seabridge with 34,000 pas­sen­ger seats avail­able and over 6,000 ve­hi­cle spaces.

“Since the de­par­ture of the MV Cabo Star from ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 12, a se­ries of struc­tured op­er­a­tional mea­sures have been im­ple­ment­ed to sus­tain car­go move­ment be­tween Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go. From that time, con­tin­gency car­go op­er­a­tions were in­tro­duced, in­clud­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of a barge, and the sail­ing sched­ule for these op­er­a­tions was pub­licly pub­lished and up­dat­ed to sup­port freight plan­ning, in­dus­try co­or­di­na­tion and trans­par­ent ac­cess to car­go space,” the au­thor­i­ty said.

“The Port Au­thor­i­ty would like to em­pha­sise that since the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny re­sumed sail­ings on Feb­ru­ary 10, each sched­uled car­go sail­ing has ac­com­mo­dat­ed the trucks pre­sent­ed for ship­ment, and to date no car­go has re­mained in the Fer­ry Ter­mi­nal yard fol­low­ing any sched­uled sail­ing. The yard has been ful­ly cleared with each sail­ing with op­er­a­tions teams mak­ing con­ces­sions for late ar­rivals and per­mit­ting them to load af­ter the cut­off time.”