GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

From con­struc­tion to hos­pi­tal­i­ty, al­most every busi­ness sec­tor in To­ba­go has been hard hit by the non-sail­ing of the MV Cabo Star car­go ves­sel.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, said loss­es are in the mil­lions and count­ing.

In fact, he de­scribed con­struc­tion on the is­land as “grind­ing to a lit­er­al halt” with the hard­wares hav­ing noth­ing to sell.

“Loss­es would def­i­nite­ly run in­to mil­lions. There are no sales, apart from which busi­ness­es have loans and com­mit­ments. Con­struc­tion alone lost mil­lions,” Williams said.

With the lim­it­ed amount of goods cur­rent­ly be­ing shipped to the is­land via the Galleons Pas­sage and the APT James, Williams said this could re­sult in a price hike, as well as a short­age of com­modi­ties.

Williams is al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to “come for­ward and say some­thing” to To­ba­go busi­ness­es.

“We vote you in, so you need to give us some an­swers and tell us what is hap­pen­ing. Give us some as­sur­ance things are un­der con­trol ... it is a deaf­en­ing si­lence from them,” he added.

On Au­gust 23, a fire broke out in the en­gine room of the MV Cabo Star af­ter it left the Port of Scar­bor­ough, re­sult­ing in the can­cel­la­tion of sail­ings since then as it is be­ing re­paired.

For now, car­go is be­ing trans­port­ed to To­ba­go via the fast fer­ries, with pri­or­i­ty be­ing giv­en to food, per­ish­ables and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

How­ev­er, these quan­ti­ties are in­suf­fi­cient.

“Some busi­ness­es have even sent home their staff be­cause there is noth­ing to sell. They have noth­ing to de­liv­er. There is no need for a dri­ver and a de­liv­ery work­er,” Williams said.

“We see one or two food and bev­er­age whole­salers with their ware­house low and they are emp­ty on some items like wa­ter, juices etc.

“They are hav­ing some chal­lenges in bring­ing those items across be­cause the Galleon’s Pas­sage can on­ly car­ry three-tonne trucks and lim­it­ed amounts. It is now mon­thend and every­one is try­ing to get their stock lev­el up.” Williams said.

He said some of the shelves are bare but To­ba­go did re­ceive some of the ba­sic items like flour, oil and feed that Na­tion­al Flour Mills promised to send.

“Again, be­cause of the ca­pac­i­ty and the amount of three-tonne trucks to get across to To­ba­go, it is a re­al night­mare at times,” Williams said.

Williams said apart from the is­land need­ing wa­ter and oth­er bev­er­ages, rice was al­so scarce and farm­ers were com­plain­ing of a short­age of feed for their live­stock.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the port is do­ing as much as it can.

Mean­while, head of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George is call­ing for em­pir­i­cal da­ta.

“While I have heard the cries of many of the lead­ers in To­ba­go about a food cri­sis or loom­ing food short­age, one has to ques­tion as to where are the fig­ures? Where is the raw, em­pir­i­cal da­ta to show or jus­ti­fy the claims of im­pend­ing dis­as­ter? Has any busi­nessper­son shown their records and books and doc­u­ments to show that there is this mass cri­sis?” George asked.

He said if one is talk­ing about food short­ages, then in the nor­mal course of things, many of the small­er trucks are the ones which car­ry food­stuff to To­ba­go.

“You can’t tell me it is on­ly a 10-tonne truck or car­go trail­er which can car­ry bags of sug­ar and rice and flour to To­ba­go. If peo­ple com­plain about cer­tain build­ing ma­te­ri­als, then one could un­der­stand that I-Beams and large con­crete struc­tures and large lengths of steel of sev­er­al pal­lets of ce­ment or those huge bags of sand can’t go to To­ba­go, but don’t tell me you can’t trans­port food, es­pe­cial­ly when the PATT (Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T) and the in­ter-is­land fer­ries have made ac­com­mo­da­tion to ac­cept more than their usu­al com­ple­ment of small trucks to as­sist,” George said.

De­spite this, he said ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this sce­nario re­mained on the PATT and the In­ter-Is­land Trans­port Co.

George al­so re­it­er­at­ed the need for a sec­ond car­go ves­sel just like the Cabo Star to avoid such sit­u­a­tions.

“It al­so shines a spot­light on To­ba­go—why are you so de­pen­dent on food­stock every day com­ing from Trinidad and else­where? What are you plant­i­ng, grow­ing and pro­duc­ing? Be­fore the hur­ri­cane Flo­ra of 1963, To­ba­go used to be the bread­bas­ket ac­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ing food to Trinidad, what has hap­pened to those glo­ry days of mas­sive plant­i­ng and grow­ing of food in To­ba­go and even ex­port­ing food to Trinidad?” George asked.

Mean­while, Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said the feed­back he got was that there was “no pan­ic” in To­ba­go.

“There are stocked shelves. Even in terms of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals there are no im­me­di­ate is­sues but if they don’t ad­dress the is­sue, then they en­vis­age there could be an is­sue,” Diptee said.

He added that the val­ue of the goods car­ried dif­fer­ent ranges, as this de­pend­ed on the type of items.

Truck­ers at the Port of Port-of-Spain wait­ing to get their goods across to To­ba­go were al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed.

How­ev­er, they said as of yes­ter­day, there were some im­prove­ments in trucks get­ting across to the is­land, al­beit slow­ly.

Di­nesh Lal­la said it took him two days to get on­board the ves­sel so he could fi­nal­ly de­liv­er his goods, which com­prised snacks and soft drinks.

“I had to sleep on the port,” he said, adding he was thank­ful that his goods were not af­fect­ed due to the heat.

Truck­er Sher­win Williams, whose goods com­prised meat and French fries, al­so had to wait two days to get on board the ves­sel to go to To­ba­go.

“We left the port on Wednes­day be­cause we did not get through. We stored our stuff, then we came back the next day at 3 am. We did not catch the 6 am sail­ing then we got the 10 am sail­ing,” Williams added.

Ganesh Ram­per­sad, for­mer pres­i­dent of Truck­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, who is al­so a truck­er, said an­oth­er prob­lem was that some truck­ers have their ve­hi­cles in To­ba­go and can­not be re­turned to Trinidad.

“In­di­vid­u­al­ly, it is prob­a­bly $3,000 per truck to go to To­ba­go. A ten-tonne truck would be los­ing prob­a­bly $2,500 to $3,000 dai­ly and hun­dreds of trucks go to To­ba­go on that Cabo Star,” he added.