Stakeholders in Tobago are warning Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley that they want no promises from him when he meets with them next week, but want concrete solutions as to how the Government intends to put an end to the dysfunctional sea bridge service which has left them with millions of dollars in losses. They also want to be part of any new process to find a vessel for the inter-island route.
President of the Tobago Chamber of Commerce Demi John Cruickshank yesterday told the T&T Guardian that the Chamber felt the PM’s intervention was “long overdue.” But he said they will attend with “an open mind, and hope we get some serious action from the people who can fix it.”
He said: “We are thankful that the Prime Minister called the meeting, it is something that he should have done a long time ago. He should have taken over the situation from the Port Authority and the Minister of Works and not allowed it to reach this crisis situation.”
He said they also hope the meeting will provide some much needed solutions.
“We don’t want promises. We want to see some serious action from the Government. We want to know are they doing to source another vessel or are they going to fix the T&T Spirit?”
Shortly before heading to Barbados on a private visit last weekend, the Prime Minister apologised to the people of Tobago for the sea bridge fiasco, after the Ocean Flower 2 contract was cancelled. He subsequently set an August 21 date to meet the stakeholders to discuss the problem.
Cruickshank is hoping that in the intervening week, Rowley will get to the bottom of the fiasco and provide some much needed answers.
“We want to know how they arrived at the vessel which they chose and the process by which it was selected,” he said.
Currently, the T&T Express is the lone passenger vessel on the sea bridge and Cruickshank said “we are fearful that if something happens, then we will be seriously cut off with no passenger ferry between Trinidad and Tobago.”
In the past four months since the Super Fast Galicia left he said Tobago’s economy had taken “an enormous beating.”
While the numbers are still to be quantified, Hotel and Tourism Association president Chris James said hoteliers had suffered over $25 million in losses for rooms alone. In the next week the stakeholders will be quantifying and putting numbers together to show the PM and his team just how badly the Tobago economy had been affected.
Cruickshank said the stakeholders will also make it clear to the PM and his team they had no input in the selection of a vessel for the sea bridge although they are the users.
He said, “We will let the Prime Minister know when we met with the board of the Port Authority they requested time to get it right. We let them do their jobs and unfortunately this is what came out of it. We will request from the Prime Minister that we be part of any team being set up to look for a new vessel.”
On the solution going forward, Cruickshank said “our best case is that there is another option other than the Ocean Flower 2, or that we secure parts to repair the T&T Spirit and that this be done within a very short space of time.”
The Spirit has been on dry dock and Cruickshank said while they had been told it would have been back in service sometime in July they had heard nothing more about the vessel. He said it was difficult to understand why if there are two vessels for the sea bridge “we spending US $26,000 a month to lease another vessel.”
Inter-Island Truckers and Trailers Association president Horace Amede is also optimistic a solution will be found once and for all.
“We hope after that meeting they can come to a decision to give us two proper ferries to run between Trinidad and Tobago.”
He said the T&T Express “is limping and taking five hours to make the journey and there are issues with the Cabo Star, we finding roaches and the toilets are not working. We hope all those things will be sorted out properly.”
Like other stakeholders, truckers are quantifying their losses, “which we expect will also run into millions, because when you cut us from 175 vehicles to forty for three months, a lot of guys did not even work because some of the people who they work for did not want to put their goods on the barge to come to Tobago.”
Amede said he did not want to pre-judge the meeting and what the PM will say.
“When we hear what he comes with we will make a definite statement,” he said.