Jearlean insists there’s no port backlog despite Tobago complaints

STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John yes­ter­day as­sured the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that there is no need to pan­ic over the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice.

She gave the as­sur­ance as she toured the Port of Port-of-Spain and in­spect­ed the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny ahead of its 9.30 pm sail­ing lat­er in the day.

The un­ease with­in the busi­ness sec­tor has grown over the past week as ten­sions mount­ed over what they’ve de­scribed as an un­re­li­able car­go ser­vice since the Cabo Star left on Jan­u­ary 12. On Fri­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed even the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly-man­aged Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Ltd has been strug­gling to get bi­tu­men from Trinidad for its quar­ry op­er­a­tions.

In a video post­ed to the min­istry’s Face­book page yes­ter­day, John said she had been trou­bled by the con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing the US$25,000-per-day fer­ry and de­cid­ed to see for her­self what was hap­pen­ing at the port.

“I am about the facts,” she said, as she spoke to Port Au­thor­i­ty CEO Mar­cia Charles-El­bourne.

“Where is the stored up car­go, the car­go that can’t get to To­ba­go?” she asked.

“We have no stored car­go for To­ba­go; we clear the yard with each op­er­a­tion and each sail­ing. There is cur­rent­ly no back­log. We have trucks that are wait­ing to load at this time,” the CEO replied.

John said while the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny is the main car­go ves­sel, the pas­sen­ger fer­ries (Galleons Pas­sage, APT James and Buc­coo Reef) com­ple­ment the ser­vice by car­ry­ing goods.

“This (MV Blue Wave) takes all the bricks, all the bi­tu­men, all the oxy­gen, the dan­ger­ous goods, the poul­try and so on. This boat is a beast - it takes every­thing.”

John said the ramp is usu­al­ly closed at 3 pm but she has asked that it stay down un­til 9 pm yes­ter­day.

“Once ve­hi­cles come here, they will take it. They take every­thing - they don’t leave any­thing. What­ev­er they have or­dered, all, all, all will be on this boat tonight.”

As she toured the low­er and up­per decks, John mar­velled at what she de­scribed as the tremen­dous amount of space avail­able.

“The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, which has 1,925 lane me­tres of car­go, has the ca­pac­i­ty to serve the needs of the coun­try, with sup­ple­men­tal ca­pac­i­ty be­ing pro­vid­ed by pas­sen­ger ves­sels which can ac­com­mo­date up to 7,000 kg car­go ve­hi­cles,” she said in a me­dia re­lease.

John said the on­go­ing sea tri­als form part of a con­trolled op­er­a­tional roll-out aligned with in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised mar­itime safe­ty stan­dards gov­ern­ing ves­sel cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, pi­lotage and over­all op­er­a­tional readi­ness across the glob­al ship­ping in­dus­try.

“The ef­fi­cient move­ment of car­go be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains a crit­i­cal na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty, as it di­rect­ly sup­ports com­merce, strength­ens sup­ply chain sta­bil­i­ty and en­sures the time­ly de­liv­ery of goods to busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens.”

John said she will con­tin­ue to take a hands-on, on-the-ground ap­proach to en­sure sus­tained op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and a re­li­able ser­vice.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, John was asked about com­plaints about in­ad­e­quate cold stor­age fa­cil­i­ties on the ves­sel, but she in­sist­ed that all was fine.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the port around mid­day yes­ter­day and spoke to sev­er­al truck­ers.

Dwayne Smith, an em­ploy­ee of Chef’s BBQ and Restau­rant in To­ba­go, was parked in a com­pa­ny van and was des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to board on stand­by.

“It’s frus­trat­ing, know­ing I have goods and I might not get to go back home with goods,” he said.

Smith said the sit­u­a­tion for many busi­ness­es in To­ba­go is dire.

“The store could close down at any time soon be­cause it at a des­per­ate short­age, and it’s not just one store we have, it is four.”

He said he was trans­port­ing chick­en, beef, goat, lamb, pork and cow heel for the restau­rants. How­ev­er, he was un­aware if the car­go ves­sel had suf­fi­cient cold stor­age for per­ish­able items.

“Not to my knowl­edge, I don’t think so as yet.”

He said com­pa­nies have to bear the loss­es if their goods are spoiled in tran­sit. He said dri­vers have to line up at around 2 am to try to get a tick­et on the boat and some­times learn around 4 pm that the ves­sel will not sail on time.

On Fri­day, the Blue Wave was sched­uled to leave Trinidad around 9.30 pm but de­spite ve­hi­cles al­ready loaded on the ves­sel, it did not leave un­til 24 hours lat­er, ar­riv­ing in Scar­bor­ough Sun­day morn­ing.

Smith said the usu­al trans­port com­pa­ny used by them no longer pro­vides that ser­vice be­cause of the seabridge dis­rup­tion.

“It can’t af­ford to come be­cause they ain’t tak­ing chance due to their re­cent loss­es.”

Asked whether he is op­ti­mistic that the MV Blue Wave would make its maid­en com­mer­cial sail­ing on Sun­day, Smith shook his head.

“I se­ri­ous­ly doubt that. The way how things look­ing, I just see­ing more prob­lems un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

A truck­er tak­ing Rock Hard ce­ment and wa­ter sup­plies for a pop­u­lar hard­ware in Scar­bor­ough said he too is pes­simistic about Sun­day’s sail­ing.

“It eh look­ing like that at all. That boat still has a lot of is­sues - elec­tri­cal and the ramp.”

He said busi­ness­es have been suf­fer­ing cat­a­stroph­ic loss­es and in­cur­ring ad­di­tion­al costs due to over­time to work­ers.

An­oth­er truck­er trans­port­ing ag­gre­gate said things ran smooth­ly this morn­ing on­ly be­cause John was present.

“The min­is­ter here so they have to look good,” he said.

He said usu­al­ly, he makes five trips for the week but is now down to just three be­cause of the in­con­sis­tent sail­ing sched­ule. He ap­plaud­ed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for con­sid­er­ing com­pen­sa­tion for busi­ness own­ers, but won­dered whether it would be ex­tend­ed to truck­ers. He said trans­port is what he does for a liv­ing and es­ti­mat­ed his drop in rev­enue to be $5,000 per week.