KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the con­tin­u­ous threat of mar­itime nar­co-traf­fick­ing, it’s go­ing to be more than a year again be­fore the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) gets back its main ves­sels.

But Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day the Coast Guard is op­er­at­ing and as­sured there are ves­sels for use.

How­ev­er, Hinds said the larg­er ves­sels all need­ed manda­to­ry re­pairs. These in­clude two Austal Cape-class pa­trol ves­sels and six Damen Stan pa­trol ves­sels.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Mar­itime Nar­co­traf­fick­ing meet­ing at Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, Hinds said, “Af­ter about 14 months they would all be back in the wa­ter, that’s the pro­gramme we have go­ing on. One has since come back to Trinidad af­ter the work in Suri­name and this is car­ried out by the Damen man­u­fac­tur­ers. They man­u­fac­ture the ves­sels, and we con­tract­ed them to do the up­grades and im­prove­ments. When they come back, we now have to re­align them to our radar sys­tem. So, that work is go­ing on now and some oth­er lit­tle stuff to make them as ef­fec­tive as they could be.

“Coast Guard ves­sels, like every oth­er piece of equip­ment, re­quire ser­vice, and, from time to time there’s manda­to­ry ser­vice, so ves­sels will al­ways be out of ser­vice. Ves­sels will al­ways be dry­docked for ma­jor works and so on.”

In the in­ter­im, Hinds said the Coast Guard con­tin­ues to utilise small ves­sels.

While he could not say how many small­er ves­sels are cur­rent­ly in use, he dis­missed Op­po­si­tion con­cerns that the coun­try’s bor­ders are not pro­tect­ed.

“I’ve been hear­ing those for aeons. Of course, we have al­ways in­di­cat­ed we have about 264 il­le­gal ports of en­try around here. Of course, be­ing as close as we are to Venezuela, there’s al­ways been some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties... Those at­tempts to get on top of those vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties will con­tin­ue,” he added.

Last Fri­day, Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel re­vealed eight large Coast Guard ves­sels were not in op­er­a­tion dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

This prompt­ed Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to call for an in­ven­to­ry of all Coast Guard equip­ment, which Hinds said he was free to do.

But Hinds al­so promised ad­di­tion­al in­ter­cep­tors were on the way based on rec­om­men­da­tions from Coast Guard ex­perts, who ad­vised Gov­ern­ment of the need for 30 ad­di­tion­al ves­sels for greater pro­tec­tion.

On Au­gust 10, the THA Chief Sec­re­tary re­vealed plans to rent two ves­sels to re­sume bor­der sur­veil­lance amid ris­ing gun vi­o­lence on the is­land.

How­ev­er, Hinds shut down these claims, as he said the THA can­not com­mis­sion any ves­sels for the Coast Guard.

Ad­dress­ing this yes­ter­day, Hinds said, “That was good for her­itage talk. No­body can’t com­mis­sion any ves­sels for the Coast Guard and I can as­sure you the Coast Guard didn’t com­mis­sion any.

“The Coast Guard ves­sel based in To­ba­go is, as well, be­ing ser­viced and of course, you would have heard the Chief of De­fence Staff say not on­ly are we ser­vic­ing those in our as­set base, but we are in the process of ac­quir­ing some ad­di­tion­al in­ter­cep­tors as we speak to beef up the thing.”