It will be several months before Parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Land and Physical Infrastructure completes its hearings and submits a final report of its findings on procurement and maintenance of the ferries on the seabridge.
Parliament has been prorogued and the committee can have no formal sittings until it resumes next month. The T&T Guardian was told sittings of the committee may not resume until after the debate on the Budget is completed.
Committee chair Stephen Creese said he felt their work had been going well and they had no problem getting information. He said over the next few weeks the secretariat will be ollating the information and will prepare the working papers.
The committee created history and set a precedent when Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley appeared to give evidence this week, the first time a sitting prime minister had appeared before such a parliamentary committee and opened himself to questioning from Opposition, Independent and government members.
Rowley had expressed concern at the hearing that Oscar Ruano, of the Mexican Company Baja Ferries, which at that time owned the Cabo Star, had sent an e mail to leong@patnt.com indicating they wanted to have a direct relationship with the Port Authority of T&T(PATT). The email and a letter which was also sent, he said, were never passed on to the PATT board. Had that been done, the price of the vessel would have been between US$5000 to US$6000 less per day, resulting in significant savings to the country.
The Cabo Star was subsequently purchased by Bridgemans Services Group and has been leased by Government at US$22,500 a day.
Two sitting ministers also appeared to give evidence, as well as scores of witnesses from the PATT, Ministry of Works and Transport, stakeholders in Tobago and other interest groups, as the committee zoomed in procurement of the Cabo Star , Ocean Flower 2 and the Super Fast Galicia which left the seabridge in April.
When he appeared before the committee, Rowley submitted the report of businessman Christian Mouttet, the sole investigator appointed to look into procurement of the Ocean Flower 2 and Cabo Star.
Creese said the compendium of documents submitted by Mouttet came with a note that some were not read by Mouttet himself because he had only received them on the eve of handing in the report to the Dr Rowley. He said those documents alone will take some time to go through.
Creese said the committee will have to decidewhether they want to “recall anybody, or call anybody we may have missed.” He could not say how much more time they needed before compiling and submitting the final report. However, other members said the work might run to February or March 2018.