Rhon­dor Dowlat

In a bid to curb sea rob­beries, Min­is­ter of Trans­port Stephen Cadiz as­sured that se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures will be soon put in place to se­cure the Gulf of Paria.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view, Cadiz said he in­tends to meet with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith on the is­sue.He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions raised con­cern­ing the rob­bery on­board the LPG tanker Vir­go Gas, which took place on June 29.

The Pe­ru­vian cap­tain and his crew mem­bers were all vi­cious­ly at­tacked. Some were beat­en, chopped and tied up, while oth­ers were shot and wound­ed.They were res­cued by the Coast Guard and tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.Eight to ten men board­ed the ship from three small fish­ing ves­sels. They were said to have been armed with ma­chetes, knives, one pis­tol and pieces of wood.

The in­ci­dent was re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian on Ju­ly 1, but a sto­ry post­ed on the Web site gcap­tain.com on Mon­day went vi­ral on Tues­day. That sto­ry er­ro­neous­ly re­port­ed the at­tack as hav­ing tak­en place on Ju­ly 10.Cadiz said the ship had been an­chored about two nau­ti­cal miles off Port-of-Spain, in the Gulf."It was an­chored and wait­ing to pick up load. I am not sure as to its des­ti­na­tion, but it was wait­ing when its crew was robbed," he said.

"The mat­ter is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice, be­cause it is a po­lice mat­ter. How­ev­er, I am yet to re­ceive an up­date as to the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions." Ma­rine Traf­fic re­ceived the ship's last voy­age in­for­ma­tion on Sun­day at 12.02 am. Its des­ti­na­tion was Point Lisas, where it was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on Ju­ly 18. It added that the last known port was San­to Domin­go on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2013 at 3.56 pm.

Cadiz said, "What we have here in Trinidad is the act of rob­bery out at sea, not pira­cy. Rob­bery out at sea is a cause for great con­cern, al­though it is some­thing that does not hap­pen of­ten. We are not go­ing to take this light­ly and we are mov­ing swift­ly to put things in place."He added that the min­istry was al­so work­ing close­ly with of­fi­cials at the T&T Coast Guard.