Gail Alexan­der

The Works Min­istry has or­dered the sale of a sec­ond-hand fer­ry ac­quired by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) which has cost the Gov­ern­ment $64.2 mil­lion to re­pair, yet nev­er been used yet.Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er who re­vealed the sit­u­a­tion in the Low­er House yes­ter­day said the min­istry had not ap­proved the lat­est con­tract re­quest­ed for the fer­ry, pend­ing a re­view of the sit­u­a­tion. He cit­ed a num­ber of ques­tions sur­round­ing Nid­co's ac­qui­si­tion of the fer­ry, the HSV Su, which was sup­posed to be used as a wa­ter taxi be­tween Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do.

Warn­er said the min­istry had in­struct­ed Nid­co to cease any fur­ther re­pair on the 14-year-old ves­sel and to ob­tain an in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping bro­ker to sell it on the sec­ond-hand mar­ket. The cata­ma­ran ves­sel with 450 pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty was pur­chased sec­ond hand, in 2008, by Nid­co, at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly (US)$3.29 mil­lion (TT$20 mil­lion) from Un­al Cagin­er, a hote­lier based in Cyprus, he said. This means that $84 mil­lion has been spent on the ves­sel. Warn­er said the ves­sel was in­spect­ed in Turkey and reg­is­tered with a lo­cal Turk­ish clas­si­fi­ca­tion so­ci­ety which was not a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Clas­si­fi­ca­tion So­ci­eties. "There­fore the main­te­nance, re­pair and op­er­a­tion was not sub­ject to strict en­force­ment of safe­ty stan­dards, char­ac­ter­is­tic of in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion so­ci­eties," Warn­er said.

In Ju­ly 2008, the UK firm Sea­speed Con­sult­ing Ltd con­tract­ed by Nid­co sur­veyed and eval­u­at­ed the ves­sel. How­ev­er, this was done in the wa­ter with­out a full hull in­spec­tion and with­out guar­an­tee or as­sur­ances from the sur­vey­or. Warn­er said a rec­om­men­da­tion to con­duct re­pairs in Cu­ra­cao was made along with the pur­chase pro­pos­al by the pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter of State in the Works Min­istry, Roger Joseph, and Nid­co's past pres­i­dent Kaisah Ince. A sub­stan­tial amount of work was done in Cu­ra­cao by ma­rine sur­vey­or/con­sul­tant Dar­ren Ed­wards of HSC Glob­al Ma­rine Ltd. Bud­get­ed cost of that job was 750,000 UK pounds. The ves­sel was then towed to In­ter Isle Con­struc­tion and Fab­ri­ca­tion ship­yard in Ch­aguara­mas where Warn­er said it had been docked since De­cem­ber 200 un­der­go­ing pe­ri­od­ic re­pairs.

It was lat­er in­spect­ed on Nid­co's re­quest by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Austal which sub­mit­ted a bid for the ser­vice. In Ju­ly 2009, the UK sur­vey firm McAus­land and Turn­er al­so sur­veyed the re­pair work done in Cu­ra­cao. They ad­vised that the con­sul­tant Ed­wards "had not com­plet­ed a com­pre­hen­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion" of the re­pair work to be done' as a re­sult of which the en­tire Cu­ra­cao job was "mis­man­aged to the ex­tent of gross in­com­pe­tence." In Au­gust 2009, the min­istry re­quest­ed a state­ment from Nid­co show­ing the ac­tu­al and es­ti­mat­ed ad­di­tion­al cost bud­get­ed for the ves­sel's re­pair and a pro­posed date for en­try in­to ser­vice. This was giv­en as $29.5 mil­lion with a tar­get date for ser­vice from mid-De­cem­ber 2009.

The min­istry again took up the is­sue of re­pair cost with Nid­co in view of the im­pend­ing de­liv­ery of four new fast fer­ries from Sep­tem­ber 2010. Warn­er said that in June, Nid­co ad­vised that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50.1 mil­lion had been in­curred in ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to the pur­chase/re­pair of the ves­sel and an es­ti­mat­ed $14.1 mil­lion was re­quired to com­plete all re­pairs in or­der to bring the ves­sel in­to full op­er­a­tion for a to­tal cost of $64.2 mil­lion. Warn­er raised a num­ber of ques­tions re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing why due dili­gence was not ex­er­cised. He ques­tioned whether Joseph or Ince had pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence or knowl­edge in ship pur­chas­ing, in­spec­tion or sur­vey, and why there was no writ­ten re­port from lo­cal sur­vey­or Cap­tain George Alex­is who in­spect­ed the ves­sel in Turkey. Warn­er queried why the in­spec­tion was con­duct­ed in the wa­ter and par­tial­ly. He al­so said there was clear­ly con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween the role of the con­sul­tant and con­trac­tor.