Tobago terminal, regional ferry, forensic centre still under review

The To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal, the pro­posed in­ter-is­land re­gion­al fer­ry and the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre re­main un­fin­ished or un­der re­view, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John said to­day.

Speak­ing at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress me­dia con­fer­ence, John ad­dressed the sta­tus of the projects which fea­tured promi­nent­ly in gov­ern­ment an­nounce­ments be­fore the April elec­tion.

The To­ba­go ANR Robin­son Air­port ter­mi­nal, orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed for com­ple­tion by Ju­ly last year, has yet to be hand­ed over to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty. John said work on the project was con­tin­u­ing, with run­way paving still un­der way.

“Well, we had our first quar­ter, and we’re still in the first quar­ter. That is NID­CO. They were paving the run­way, as I heard last. NID­CO’s chair­man was up there last week,” she said.

John added she ex­pect­ed to vis­it To­ba­go lat­er this month.

“And I will go at the end of this month with the ex­pec­ta­tion that one could say this air­port has achieved prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion and hand it over to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, to the Min­istry,” she said.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about the pro­posed re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, dis­cus­sions on which be­gan in 2024. John con­firmed the project had not been aban­doned but said it was not cur­rent­ly un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion.

“Our first or­der of busi­ness is to get that sea bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go as right as we can get it. I think we’d love to do the re­gion­al fer­ry, but that is not be­fore the Cab­i­net at this time, or even be­fore the Board of the Port Au­thor­i­ty,” she said.

Asked whether the fer­ry had been scrapped, John replied: “No, not at all, not at all.”

At­ten­tion then turned to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, a project an­nounced more than a decade ago and for­mal­ly launched in De­cem­ber 2023. The fa­cil­i­ty was to be fund­ed through a grant from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $95 mil­lion.

John said the project re­mained sep­a­rate from plans to con­sol­i­date na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ties at Tamana and con­firmed it had been reval­i­dat­ed by the new Cab­i­net.

Chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Shankar Bidaisee said dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na.

“So right now, UDe­Cott is en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic. And the next step is to, once they form a con­tract, do due dili­gence. And once they con­duct that, then we hit the ground run­ning,” he said.

Asked whether the project was still alive, Bidaisee replied: “Yes, ab­solute­ly.”

He said a fi­nal start date was ex­pect­ed with­in months.

“Well, we sus­pect it should be in about three to four months. We should have a fi­nal date by which the project should start,” he said, adding the time­line de­pend­ed on the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.