Opposition calls for intervention over Tobago cargo crisis

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­ter­vene in the car­go seabridge is­sues af­fect­ing To­ba­go.

In a state­ment on Sun­day, Beck­les said To­ba­go res­i­dents are fac­ing in­creas­es in food prices fol­low­ing dis­rup­tions in car­go op­er­a­tions. She ref­er­enced re­ports of short­ages and the dou­bling of egg prices.

Beck­les ques­tioned the re­sponse of Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, stat­ing that 24 hours had passed with­out com­ment from him on the is­sue. She al­so crit­i­cised Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan over the han­dling of the car­go op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny.

Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment did not take steps to se­cure a re­place­ment ves­sel be­fore the end of the MV Cabo Star lease. She not­ed that the Cabo Star left ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 12 and that the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny ar­rived on Jan­u­ary 22. She added that the ves­sel was dam­aged on Jan­u­ary 30 dur­ing berthing ma­noeu­vres in To­ba­go while on sea tri­als.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, the State is pay­ing US$25,500 per day for the ves­sel. She asked who owns the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny and what con­tin­gency plans were in place be­fore the end of the Cabo Star lease.

Beck­les said busi­ness­es in To­ba­go are re­port­ing dif­fi­cul­ty sourc­ing ba­sic goods. She stat­ed that one busi­ness re­port­ed loss­es ex­ceed­ing one mil­lion dol­lars in the last month. She al­so said truck­ers are un­able to op­er­ate with cer­tain­ty and fam­i­lies are con­cerned about the ar­rival of sup­plies.

Beck­les called on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide an ac­count of the events sur­round­ing the ves­sel and to out­line a plan to en­sure the move­ment of car­go to and from To­ba­go.