Government tests ”Sail Clear” as push for maritime digitisation continues

OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment’s push to mod­ernise mar­itime op­er­a­tions moved a step clos­er to full roll­out this week, as the Sail Clear sys­tem was placed un­der live test­ing at Ch­aguara­mas, pro­cess­ing in­com­ing cruis­ers in re­al time.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and Tourism, Satyaka­ma "Kar­ma" Ma­haraj, said he was on site to ob­serve the first live test of the sys­tem, de­scrib­ing it as a ma­jor shift away from out­dat­ed man­u­al pro­ce­dures in the mar­itime sec­tor.

Sail Clear is an elec­tron­ic no­ti­fi­ca­tion plat­form used by yachts and plea­sure craft op­er­a­tors to sub­mit Cus­toms de­c­la­ra­tions pri­or to ar­rival, re­plac­ing tra­di­tion­al pa­per-based doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“You had to bring car­bon pa­per and man­u­al­ly fill out forms. We de­cid­ed to digi­tise and mod­ernise the en­tire process. What used to take four to six hours should now take 10 to 15 min­utes,” Ma­haraj said.

He stressed that the Ch­aguara­mas ex­er­cise was not a cer­e­mo­ni­al launch but a live op­er­a­tional test, with ac­tu­al ves­sels be­ing processed through the new dig­i­tal sys­tem as part of its fi­nal re­fine­ment stage.

The min­is­ter said the re­form forms part of a wider strat­e­gy to im­prove ease of do­ing busi­ness and strength­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in the cruise and yacht­ing sec­tor.

Ma­haraj said Gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing sig­nif­i­cant ex­pan­sion of the in­dus­try, with plans to grow cruise and yacht ar­rivals well be­yond cur­rent lev­els.

“We had about 700 cruis­ers last year. Our aim is to grow that to 10,000 to start,” he said.

He al­so high­light­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strate­gic role as a safe har­bour, ref­er­enc­ing the re­cent Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, dur­ing which ves­sels sought refuge lo­cal­ly.

“We are the on­ly safe port in the re­gion. We should be the cruis­ing cap­i­tal of the hemi­sphere,” Ma­haraj said.

He added that Gov­ern­ment will in­ten­si­fy in­ter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tion of the sys­tem and the wider mar­itime of­fer­ing as it seeks to po­si­tion the coun­try as a re­gion­al hub for ma­rine tourism.

Pres­i­dent of Ma­rine Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Jesse James, who was al­so present dur­ing the live test, said the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Sail Clear rep­re­sents long-await­ed progress af­ter decades of dis­cus­sion.

“We’ve been try­ing for over 25 years to get this done. What I’ve seen hap­pen in eight months is over­whelm­ing for me. I’m lost for words,” he said.

James said the live sys­tem will re­duce de­lays as­so­ci­at­ed with man­u­al pro­cess­ing and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy for op­er­a­tors en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters.

He added that the re­form will al­so gen­er­ate skilled em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­crease for­eign ex­change earn­ings as the sec­tor ex­pands.

“These are skilled jobs, not hand­outs. These are fam­i­lies and gen­er­a­tions teach­ing re­al mar­itime skills and ser­vices,” James said.

The sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to un­der­go fur­ther re­fine­ment fol­low­ing the live test ahead of its of­fi­cial na­tion­al roll­out in May.