Shas­tri Boodan

The shut­down of the in­ter-is­land car­go fer­ry the Cabo Star is af­fect­ing the trans­porta­tion of goods to the is­land of To­ba­go.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions to­day, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said, "It was un­for­tu­nate that the boat caught fire but we are work­ing with the Port Au­thor­i­ty to see how we could al­le­vi­ate the stress­es. We are giv­ing some pri­or­i­ty to get­ting food and es­sen­tial goods and ser­vices up."

Con­sumers in To­ba­go start­ed snatch­ing up loaves of Kiss bread and bak­ery prod­ucts as soon as they were placed on shelves on Wednes­day. Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that since the Cabo Star went out of ser­vice last week the bak­ing com­pa­ny that is based at Gas­ton Street, Lange Park Ch­agua­nas has on­ly been al­lowed to send one three-tonne truck to the is­land.

Kiss usu­al­ly ships two 6-tonne trucks dai­ly to To­ba­go.

When con­tact­ed of­fi­cials at Kiss said they had "No com­ment at this time" on the mat­ter. The To­ba­go busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has al­so asked when the Cabo Star would be back up and run­ning.