Shas­tri Boodan

Hun­dreds of pas­sen­gers were left strand­ed in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, hav­ing been bumped off the ear­ly sail­ing of the APT James fast fer­ry af­ter the Port Au­thor­i­ty of­fi­cials tried to ac­com­mo­date steel­band play­ers who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in Sun­day’s night’s Na­tion­al Panora­ma Medi­um Band com­pe­ti­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the prob­lem orig­i­nat­ed due to the over­selling of tick­ets for the APT James’ sail­ing and sev­er­al oth­ers turn­ing up with­out con­firmed tick­ets.

The ves­sel can ac­com­mo­date a max­i­mum 900 pas­sen­gers, but the sail­ing was over­booked for the trip to Port-of-Spain, which was sched­uled to leave Scar­brough 6.30 am.

The spill over pas­sen­gers, num­ber­ing over 200, were placed on stand­by for the 4 pm sail­ing of the Buc­coo Reef. This meant some con­firmed pas­sen­gers booked on the Buc­coo Reef sail­ing were al­so dis­placed for that sail­ing.

How­ev­er, the prob­lem was ex­ac­er­bat­ed, as while the Buc­coo Reef al­so had a 900-pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty, on­ly 500 pas­sen­gers were ac­com­mo­dat­ed af­ter the cap­tain took a de­ci­sion based on a health and safe­ty is­sue.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the cap­tain, not­ing that the ves­sel on­ly had 500 life jack­ets, de­ter­mined it would be un­safe to leave Scar­bor­ough with a load of 900 pas­sen­gers.

Some af­fect­ed fer­ry pas­sen­gers then made their way to the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at Crown Point, hop­ing to get plane tick­ets to re­turn to Trinidad, caus­ing some chaos at the air­port.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was told Caribbean Air­lines of­fi­cials could not ac­com­mo­date them, as by that time the stand-by list had al­ready been closed.

A se­nior Port Au­thor­i­ty of­fi­cial, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia un­der a con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, con­firmed that the fast fer­ries have been op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty over the last few weeks be­cause of a short­age of life jack­ets avail­able.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, the APT James, which can hold up to 900 pas­sen­gers, was over­booked by 300 pas­sen­gers yes­ter­day morn­ing and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to al­low the ves­sel to leave at its full ca­pac­i­ty.

That still meant sev­er­al hun­dred pas­sen­gers had to be left be­hind and seek ac­com­mo­da­tion on the Buc­coo Reef, which sailed out of Scar­bor­ough around 4 pm yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the ves­sel on­ly took around 500 pas­sen­gers be­cause of the life jack­et short­age.

Guardian Me­dia was told many of the pas­sen­gers who missed the ear­li­er sail­ing were ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the oth­er ves­sel, but some still were not able to get on. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, T&T In­ter- Is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny CEO Vil­ma Lewis-Cock­burn said the back­log may have been peo­ple who weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly con­firmed pas­sen­gers. How­ev­er, she couldn’t say how many peo­ple were turned away.

“Every peak pe­ri­od in To­ba­go, you will have per­sons who will come down and try to get on but we have a lim­it­ed amount of space so we can’t take every­body who tries to get home,” Lewis-Cock­burn said.

She not­ed too that the ves­sels can on­ly take the num­ber of peo­ple who are cov­ered by in­sur­ance.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Dionne Ligoure, head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Caribbean Air­lines said, she was un­aware of any ad­verse sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing pas­sen­gers.

“I am un­aware of any sit­u­a­tion of CAL cus­tomers be­ing in­con­ve­nienced at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. There were smooth op­er­a­tions for Sun­day and Mon­day,” Ligoure said, not­ing every­one who was booked was ac­com­mo­dat­ed.