A war of words oc­curred yes­ter­day out­side the Sen­ate, as Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Wade Mark in­sist­ed Gov­ern­ment’s planned Jean de La Valette ves­sel is de­fec­tive and the lease must be can­celled and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan de­fend­ed the lease, dis­miss­ing Mark’s claims.

“If the ev­i­dence on this ves­sel con­forms to the re­ports we’ve found on de­fec­tive­ness, Gov­ern­ment must can­cel this arrange­ment AS­AP be­cause pas­sen­gers’ safe­ty is para­mount,” Mark told re­porters.

But Sinanan said if the ves­sel was de­fec­tive it wouldn’t have been op­er­at­ing in Eu­rope un­der laws there and if it had been in­volved in pre­vi­ous ar­bi­tra­tion, it wasn’t Gov­ern­ment’s con­cern.

Mark sum­moned re­porters to the cor­ri­dor out­side the Par­lia­ment cham­ber soon af­ter Sinanan, dur­ing the Sen­ate sit­ting, ac­cused Mark of spread­ing “fake news” about the ves­sel.

Sinanan had ear­li­er replied to Mark’s queries on the ves­sel, say­ing it was a medi­um-term so­lu­tion for the seabridge un­til Gov­ern­ment re­ceives its long term so­lu­tion of the two fast fer­ries or­dered from Aus­tralia. The cur­rent short term so­lu­tion is the con­tin­ued use of T&T Spir­it and the Galleons Pas­sage.

Sinanan said the Jean de La Valette was be­ing leased for a year and ten­ders were is­sued lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly last Au­gust, clos­ing last Oc­to­ber. He said rec­om­men­da­tion was made with the pre­ferred ten­der­er, Vir­tu Hold­ings, af­ter three com­pa­nies pro­duced op­tions.

Sinanan said the con­tract - for one year with an op­tion to re­new for a fur­ther six months, is cur­rent­ly be­ing fi­nalised by Nid­co. He couldn’t give cost fig­ures. He said Nid­co used the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices of a spe­cialised mar­itime firm in the UK to en­sure the con­tract was in keep­ing with mar­itime agree­ments.

Mark asked if Sinanan was aware the Jean de la Valette is “... A de­fec­tive ves­sel, sub­ject to ar­bi­tra­tion in the UK and al­so court pro­ceed­ings in Aus­tralia?”

But Sinanan said he ex­pect­ed the Op­po­si­tion to bring “fake news and try to dam­age Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to have a bet­ter sea bridge.”

Mark left the Cham­ber and sub­se­quent­ly told re­porters in the cor­ri­dor that he stood by his po­si­tion.

“This ves­sel is de­fec­tive,” Mark in­sist­ed, dis­play­ing a print­out of a Feb­ru­ary 2017 re­port which stat­ed Aus­tralian ship­builder Austal was locked in an ar­bi­tra­tion fight with Vir­tu Fer­ries over the con­struc­tion of the ves­sel.

The re­port not­ed that the 800-pas­sen­ger, 230-car ves­sel was built in 2010. It stat­ed that Vir­tu, which had op­er­at­ed fer­ry ser­vices be­tween Mal­ta and Sici­ly, had ar­gued Austal should have alert­ed it to de­fects in the fer­ry’s ropax welds.

Mark said, “The peo­ple took this ves­sel to ar­bi­tra­tion be­cause it was de­fec­tive, how can the Min­is­ter say I’m bring­ing ‘fake news?’”

Al­leg­ing Sinanan didn’t speak the truth in the Sen­ate when he asked him about the ves­sel, Mark added, “It’s de­fec­tive, the ev­i­dence is there. Re­ports on the mat­ter said Austal set­tled a ‘long­stand­ing ar­bi­tra­tion mat­ter which re­lat­ed to a la­tent de­fect in a com­mer­cial ves­sel’ de­liv­ered to a Eu­ro­pean cus­tomer, sev­en years ago.

“If they hired UK ex­perts to check the sit­u­a­tion, how come they didn’t ob­serve these re­ports and if they had and Gov­ern­ment was aware of the de­fect/ar­bi­tra­tion sit­u­a­tion, why are they putting pas­sen­gers’ safe­ty at risk with this ves­sel? If it was de­fec­tive, how we know every­thing was fixed well? Gov­ern­ment is once again buy­ing cat in bag!”

Af­ter Mark spoke, Sinanan, who was al­so in the cor­ri­dor, was asked about Mark’s com­ments. Sinanan not­ed that Nid­co was han­dling the pro­cure­ment. But he said all ves­sels for T&T are vet­ted by in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime ex­perts. He said if the ves­sel was in ar­bi­tra­tion, that was be­fore it was leased and ar­bi­tra­tion wasn’t Gov­ern­ment’s con­cern. He said many items which had been in­volved in le­gal mat­ters are still leased or sold.

“All in­di­ca­tions are the ves­sel has been op­er­at­ing. Our in­for­ma­tion is the peo­ple who leased it from Vir­tu are mov­ing on to a larg­er ves­sel. More im­por­tant­ly, it’ll be pro­ceed­ing to its manda­to­ry dry­dock­ing be­fore com­ing to T&T. We re­ly on in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts and once they cer­ti­fy it and our mar­itime ex­perts cer­ti­fy it al­so, it means it can op­er­ate,” Sinanan said.

“Once all process­es are com­plet­ed and all goes as planned, Nid­co’s in­di­cat­ed they’re look­ing at its ar­rival by end of May. The Op­po­si­tion is try­ing to dam­age our ef­forts the same way they ‘worked on’ the Galleon’s Pas­sage. I’m sure they’ll al­so find fault with the two new fast fer­ries be­ing built.”