Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jer­lean John says there will be a dis­rup­tion in in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice, as the MV Cabo Star will be dry-docked be­tween Ju­ly 12 and Au­gust 3.

To mit­i­gate against this, John said the MV Em­prende­do­ra will re­turn while there will be a ramp­ing up of sail­ings by the Galleons Pas­sage and MV Spir­it in the lead-up to the Cabo Star go­ing on dry dock.

“The Cabo Star car­ries about 150 trucks every day, there will be a short­fall. You could do prob­a­bly (the math) much bet­ter than me. The MV Spir­it car­ries about 75 vans and the Galleon (Pas­sage), about 30, So that’s 100. The Em­prende­do­ra will car­ry about 18 or so of those, large con­tain­ers, so there will be a bit of a short­fall.”

She con­tin­ued: “That is why we have said we have giv­en a month look ahead, be­ing proac­tive. So, there will be a pe­ri­od of en­hanced ser­vice with the Cabo Star to en­sure per­sons who wish, they can stock up in ad­vance. The stake­hold­ers have as­sured us that the first two weeks will be okay. It’s the third week that will present that chal­lenge.”

Stress­ing the im­por­tance of the car­go ves­sel on the sea bridge, John said the MV Em­prende­do­ra will be utilised and while it is not ide­al, it is suf­fi­cient.

“To take the, what we call the dan­ger­ous car­go, such as the high­ly flam­ma­ble and tox­ic ma­te­ri­als such as chlo­rine gas for Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), oxy­gen for the hos­pi­tal, bi­tu­men, ni­tro­gen, propane, et cetera we had to hire the MV Em­prende­do­ra.”

Re­spond­ing to an­oth­er ques­tion, John said the de­ci­sion to sell a dry dock at Caribbean Dock­yard and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­doc), which could have been used to ser­vice Cabo Star, cost the coun­try mil­lions in for­eign ex­change. “The dry dock sank. But you know, that’s sub­mersible. It’s sup­posed to sink and come back up. It’s not sup­posed to sink to the bot­tom of the ocean like a stone. It was sold, I think, for $1. The val­ue was $10 mil­lion, sold for $1 to a com­pa­ny in Turkey. And it is work­ing just fine in Turkey. So what has hap­pened is we have lost about US$22 mil­lion in rev­enue over the last two years,” John said, adding that she planned to say more dur­ing next week’s mid-year re­view de­bate.