PM thanks St Vincent after rescue of fishing vessel crew

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar has ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines fol­low­ing the res­cue of five Trinidad and To­ba­go fish­er­men af­ter the sink­ing of the fish­ing ves­sel ST VIN­CENT VII.

In an up­date is­sued to­day, the Min­istry of De­fence said the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment thanked St Vin­cent for its as­sis­tance, prais­ing the coun­try’s re­sponse and the cour­te­sies ex­tend­ed to the crew dur­ing the res­cue op­er­a­tion.

The min­istry said the five sur­viv­ing crew mem­bers were trans­ferred from the MV MAR­VEL KITE to the St Vin­cent Coast Guard at a ren­dezvous point at about 10.22 pm on Tues­day be­fore be­ing tak­en to the Kingstown Cruise Ship Ter­mi­nal.

The fish­er­men un­der­went med­ical as­sess­ments on ar­rival and were then tak­en by am­bu­lance to the Mil­ton Cato Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal for fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion and treat­ment.

The min­istry al­so con­firmed that crew mem­ber An­tho­ny Mur­ray was pro­nounced dead at 11.23 pm by Dr Snag­gs. His body was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal’s mor­tu­ary.

It said arrange­ments have been made by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Fish­eries De­part­ment to ac­com­mo­date the sur­viv­ing crew mem­bers at the Cob­ble­stone Ho­tel in Kingstown af­ter they are dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

The Min­istry of De­fence said it will pro­vide fur­ther up­dates on arrange­ments for the re­turn of the sur­viv­ing crew mem­bers and Mur­ray’s body to Trinidad and To­ba­go.