Farley apologises to Tobagonians over ferry crisis; weighs compensation to business owners

STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says To­bag­o­ni­ans’ pa­tience is “right­ful­ly run­ning out” as the cri­sis on the fer­ry ser­vice deep­ens and is now a mat­ter of se­ri­ous con­cern.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as he re­ferred to an ap­peal he had made on Feb­ru­ary 2 for the pub­lic to have “grace and pa­tience” amid the tran­si­tion from the Cabo Star to the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny.

“I asked for pa­tience be­cause the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny came and there were some ac­ci­dents and in­ci­dents with the ramp, ac­ci­dents along the jet­ty, and right­ful­ly, To­ba­go, your pa­tience is run­ning out. It is un­der­stand­able peo­ple’s pa­tience and anx­i­ety is be­ing worked up,” Au­gus­tine said dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence.

Au­gus­tine had de­scribed the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny’s ar­rival on the is­land as prophet­ic as he cam­paigned ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions, com­par­ing the name of the Pana­man­ian-flagged ves­sel to the of­fi­cial colour of his To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), blue. The TPP even­tu­al­ly swept the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment 15-0.

The car­go boat was ex­pect­ed to leave Port-of-Spain on Fri­day night but an­oth­er tech­ni­cal is­sue, re­port­ed­ly a hy­draulic ramp prob­lem, de­layed its sail­ing by 24 hours. Al­though it ar­rived in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day morn­ing, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is plead­ing for a more re­li­able ser­vice as the is­land is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to se­vere short­ages.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence, with the Blue Wave still not func­tion­ing ful­ly on the seabrdi­ge due to an ac­ci­dent and sev­er­al tech­ni­cal is­sues since its ar­rival on Jan­u­ary 22, Au­gus­tine apol­o­gised to his fel­low To­bag­o­ni­ans for the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

He said larg­er su­per­mar­kets are still far­ing okay, “but if you go to the rur­al par­lours and shops, some goods are not fil­ter­ing to them.” He said he has tasked a unit in the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance to quan­ti­fy the eco­nom­ic blow to busi­ness­es, say­ing the THA will give some con­sid­er­a­tion to com­pen­sa­tion to af­fect­ed peo­ple.

Au­gus­tine said the THA will do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to keep busi­ness­es afloat and to sup­port en­tre­pre­neurs.

How­ev­er, he said it was hyp­o­crit­i­cal for cer­tain stake­hold­ers to al­ready con­demn the boat. He said un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2017, there was a three-month gap be­tween the ex­it of the Su­per­fast Gali­cia and the ac­qui­si­tion of the Cabo Star. But he called for the THA to have seat at the ta­ble when dis­cus­sions are be­ing held to pro­cure in­ter-is­land ves­sels.

Au­gus­tine said he ex­pects the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T to stick to the March 1 dead­line for the first com­mer­cial sail­ing of the MV Blue Wave, but ac­knowl­edged he is un­aware of any con­tin­gency plan if oth­er is­sues arise with the ves­sel.

Asked whether cen­tral gov­ern­ment erred by on­ly leas­ing a barge for ten days, from Feb­ru­ary 6-16, af­ter the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny ex­pe­ri­enced its ac­ci­dent, Au­gus­tine said, “It was per­haps over­ly am­bi­tious to on­ly lease the barge for ten days. If you un­der­stand the work­horse of (Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture) Ms Jear­lean John, you would un­der­stand that she likes to get things done, and get it done now. She felt we should get it done in ten days. It not work­ing out in ten days meant the min­istry and the Port Au­thor­i­ty prob­a­bly had its ex­pec­ta­tions a lit­tle too lofty and prob­a­bly wasn’t as re­al­is­tic.”

On the S&P Glob­al re­port not­ing a litany of main­te­nance and safe­ty-re­lat­ed is­sues with the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, in­clud­ing 28 de­fects logged across five coun­tries from 2023-2025, Au­gus­tine said he had not seen the re­port yet. How­ev­er, he asked Guardian Me­dia, which re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on the is­sues the ves­sel ex­pe­ri­enced pri­or to its ar­rival here, to send a copy to him.

He said the car­go prob­lem speaks to a broad­er is­sue about To­ba­go’s in­ad­e­quate food se­cu­ri­ty.

“We start­ed a study last year to look at how long can To­ba­go sus­tain it­self food-wise with­out any sail­ing of the ves­sel.”

He said the ob­jec­tive is for the is­land to reach a state of three months’ food se­cu­ri­ty, but not­ed To­ba­go has no re­al fac­to­ry pro­duc­ing food at a mass scale.

“That is some­thing we have to have a con­ver­sa­tion about and fix in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” Au­gus­tine said.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, mean­while, busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad was fu­ri­ous, as she not­ed she and hun­dreds of oth­er busi­ness own­ers were scram­bling to get their items at the Scar­bor­ough Port af­ter the MV Blue Wave ar­rived be­lat­ed­ly. She said she ex­pects no com­pen­sa­tion from the THA for their loss­es and de­scribed Au­gus­tine as a failed leader.

“Know­ing the his­to­ry of the in­di­vid­ual and the team, I feel more con­fi­dent it would come out to ze­ro re­sults, and all of that is just talk, talk, talk, hop­ing this would be blown over in the next cou­ple weeks,” she said.

She said busi­ness own­ers have spent many sleep­less nights at the port and at ware­hous­es, and they de­mand an­swers.

“All the politi­cians who had a part to play in this, Madam Jear­lean John and her team and Au­gus­tine knew what they were get­ting in­to. I am not com­fort­able that they were in­no­cent­ly duped with this ‘Blue Grave Har­mo­ny’. We need an­swers in terms of the pro­cure­ment process: who were the peo­ple in­volved and en­gaged? I am cer­tain there were oth­er ves­sels avail­able, so why was this one cho­sen? The cost is not quite at­trac­tive so why were bur­dened with this?”

She not­ed Au­gus­tine’s com­ments about the one-year lease of the ves­sel, but said an im­me­di­ate change is need­ed.

“Is he out of his cot­ton-pick­ing mind? Who he in­tends to bur­den with this for an­oth­er 11 months? He is a failed en­ti­ty as a leader of this is­land.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day al­so took um­brage with Au­gus­tine’s state­ment about the cri­sis.

In a Face­book post, Row­ley, who owns a farm in Ma­son Hall, de­scribed him­self as a pro­duc­er and at­tached mul­ti­ple im­ages of his live­stock. Row­ley said he was now in a “re­al cri­sis,” as there is no feed­mill in To­ba­go and since the car­go dis­rup­tion, he can­not get feed for thou­sands of his an­i­mals (pigs, sheep and chick­en).

Row­ley al­so al­leged po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, claim­ing THA vet­eri­nar­i­ans were not vis­it­ing his farm.

Mean­while, for­mer To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe said she faced se­vere crit­i­cism in 2017 when the Su­per­fast Gali­cia’s ser­vice end­ed and no re­place­ment was pro­cured quick­ly.

“The pub­lic was ral­lied to be­rate the two To­ba­go MPs and the Prime Min­is­ter; the Truck­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion called for the head of the line min­is­ter.”

How­ev­er, she said the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment fixed the T&T Spir­it, se­cured the Galleons Pas­sage, leased the Cabo Star and then bought the APT James and Buc­coo Reef fast fer­ries to al­le­vi­ate the in­ter-is­land fer­ry is­sues.

“Fast for­ward to to­day, no car­go boat for over a month: no Row­ley to blame, no PNM To­ba­go MPs to be­rate, no Wat­son Duke to swim.”

She said de­spite this, all she was hear­ing is “just si­lence. Daunt­ing, deaf­en­ing, si­lence.”