Rose­marie Sant

An Es­ton­ian en­gi­neer on the in­ter-is­land car­go ves­sel Cabo Star has been "re­moved" from the ship and sent home af­ter com­plain­ing about safe­ty is­sues on the ves­sel.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that Edu­rak La­suk, who came with the ves­sel when it ar­rived in Trinidad in Ju­ly, com­plained in a let­ter to Port of­fi­cials about con­cerns which he had with the Cabo Star in­clud­ing is­sues which he thought posed a risk to those us­ing the ves­sel.

But Vice Pres­i­dent of Bridge­mans Ser­vices Group An­drew Purdey in re­sponse to queries said that La­suk was "a dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ee," who had "base­less con­cerns."

Re­spond­ing to emailed ques­tions, Purdey said "we had the union and our ship man­agers at­tend the ves­sel and un­der­stand his con­cerns. The con­cerns are base­less and he has been re­moved from the ship."

Asked how La­suk’s de­par­ture had af­fect­ed main­te­nance of the Cabo Star, Purdey said op­er­a­tions “re­main as al­ways op­er­at­ing ful­ly with­in class and all port safe­ty re­quire­ments.”

Last week­end the Cabo Star was de­layed in its nor­mal sail­ing sched­ule be­cause the star­board en­gine failed. Purdey as­sured "all is­sues," had been "re­solved."

He said pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance spares which were re­quired had been “held up at Cus­toms. All spares are now in our con­trol and main­te­nance is in hand.”

As a re­sult, he said, “the Cabo Star re­mains ready and durable for on­go­ing ser­vice.”

But truck­ers told the T&T Guardian that the ves­sel had slowed down con­sid­er­ably.

One truck­er, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the ves­sel is now trav­el­ling at 13 knots.

“We be­lieve that there are en­gine prob­lems and they don’t want any­thing to hap­pen to the ves­sel. So they have slowed it down con­sid­er­ably.”

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that there is a re­quest that the sail­ing time of the ves­sel be brought up to mid­day, from the cur­rent de­par­ture time of 2 pm from Port-of-Spain. This is be­ing re­sist­ed by truck­ers who said the pro­posed change in time will af­fect their trade.

Stake­hold­ers in the To­ba­go busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty al­so lodged their con­cerns about the pro­posed change in sail­ing time. They said the ear­li­er sail­ing will not al­low the truck­ers enough time to of­fload and get goods back on the ves­sel in time for the re­turn sail­ing.

The is­sue of the change in de­par­ture time is ex­pect­ed to be dis­cussed in de­tail at a meet­ing which has been called by the Port Au­thor­i­ty with stake­hold­ers this week.

Truck­ers al­so com­plained that there is lim­it­ed cab­in space on the Cabo Star. They say there are about six bunks in each cab­in and some truck­ers are still sleep­ing on the ground.

Asked whether there are any plans to im­prove the cab­in ca­pac­i­ty of the Cabo Star, Purdey said that was up to of­fi­cials of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT).

He said “cur­rent­ly all cab­ins are avail­able to the PATT which op­er­ates this phase of the ser­vice. It will be their de­ter­mi­na­tion which cab­ins are de­liv­ered for ser­vice. Go­ing for­ward we are work­ing to in­crease pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty but this is a few months out.”

The ves­sel has a one-year con­tract which costs tax­pay­ers US$22,500 a day.

Purdey said he is hop­ing “to make the Cabo Star a long-term fix­ture in this route and any­thing we can do to im­prove ser­vice will be con­sid­ered to se­cure fu­ture con­tracts.”

Mean­time, Purdey con­firmed that the Ocean Flower 2, the pas­sen­ger fer­ry which has put in a bid for the pas­sen­ger ser­vice on the seabridge is off dry­dock.

“I am con­sid­er­ing invit­ing the me­dia for a tour at a mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able date,” he said.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty al­so con­firmed that the eval­u­a­tion of ten­ders for a pas­sen­ger fer­ry for the seabridge has be­gun. Ten­ders closed in Sep­tem­ber but the eval­u­a­tion of the bids on­ly start­ed last week.

Asked about the com­po­si­tion of the ten­ders com­mit­tee the Port con­firmed that eval­u­a­tion had start­ed but in an emailed re­sponse stat­ed it could not pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion on the com­mit­tee.

Well-placed sources told the T&T Guardian that the Port had sought the as­sis­tance of the Coast Guard in eval­u­at­ing the ten­ders.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that To­ba­go stake­hold­ers de­cid­ed against sit­ting on the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee fol­low­ing a re­quest from Port Chair­man Al­i­son Lewis.