Minister dismisses damning report on Blue Wave Harmony

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John yes­ter­day dis­missed a damn­ing S&P Glob­al ves­sel his­to­ry re­port on the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, call­ing it “in­for­ma­tion on Wikipedia,” even though it flagged mul­ti­ple safe­ty and main­te­nance-re­lat­ed de­fects re­lat­ed to the ves­sel over the past two years.

The re­port, a core ship­ping-in­dus­try record used to vet ships world­wide, records the ship’s US Coast Guard de­ten­tion and lists around 30 de­fects flagged on the ves­sel in five coun­tries be­tween 2023 and 2025.

How­ev­er, com­ment­ing on a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion in yes­ter­day’s pa­per, which high­light­ed the ves­sel’s re­cent trou­bling his­to­ry, John was dis­mis­sive of the line of ques­tion­ing on pos­si­ble safe­ty is­sues this may raise for its use on the in­ter-is­land ser­vice, telling re­porters at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress me­dia con­fer­ence: “This is some­thing, pub­lic in­for­ma­tion on some web­site called Wikipedia al­lyuh go and put up as ex­clu­sive. Ask a next ques­tion. Don’t ask me about that.”

She added, “Go back and find it.”

An S&P Glob­al ves­sel his­to­ry record is one of the ship­ping’s in­dus­try main paid back­ground-check tools, used world­wide by in­sur­ers, banks, char­ter­ers, and port and mar­itime pro­fes­sion­als to ver­i­fy what’s on the of­fi­cial record about a ship.

The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Jan­u­ary 22 and was dam­aged on Jan­u­ary 30 dur­ing berthing ma­noeu­vres in To­ba­go, while on its first sea tri­al ahead of start­ing up op­er­a­tions on the seabridge. The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go lat­er said pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion point­ed to weath­er con­di­tions, in­clud­ing strong winds, as con­tribut­ing fac­tors, with tech­ni­cal teams lat­er con­duct­ing dam­age as­sess­ments along­side the op­er­a­tor and oth­er agen­cies. The ves­sel re­turned to Trinidad last week af­ter ini­tial re­pairs in To­ba­go and has been un­der­go­ing fi­nal re­pairs since then.

On the ves­sel’s re­turn to the wa­ter, John pre­dict­ed a short time­line, telling re­porters, “The ves­sel should be put back in new wa­ter by um, maybe Thurs­day, ... Wednes­day they should um start the sea tri­als again.”

John al­so ad­dressed the re­pair process, say­ing it is gov­erned by in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments.

“This is about in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion. You don’t mess about with that,” she said.

She claimed welders were mo­bilised quick­ly to go to To­ba­go af­ter the in­ci­dent, but said re­pairs could not be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly.

“We had, um, welders on the ground by eight o’clock the fol­low­ing morn­ing in To­ba­go, but they can’t touch the boat be­cause they had to have in­ter­na­tion­al as­ses­sors… So even af­ter the work that has been done is su­per­vised by in­ter­na­tion­al as­ses­sors.”

Asked for an es­ti­mate of the re­pair cost, John said: “No, I don’t have the cost of that.”

On an­oth­er line of ques­tion­ing, John said the ves­sel’s se­lec­tion “was not a sole se­lect” process, but added that she did not know who was on the team.

“Who was on the team? I don’t know and that wasn’t done at the min­istry. I don’t know who’s on the team,” she said.