Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the lease of the Mal­tese ves­sel Jean De La Valette should be stopped and an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry should be con­duct­ed in­to pro­cure­ment process for the pro­posed fer­ry.

Speak­ing at his Oropouche East Con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he had not­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­sponse to the is­sues sur­round­ing the ves­sel and found he was neg­li­gent in the mat­ter. Mooni­lal said the PM has tak­en the wrong ap­proach to the con­cerns raised and it clear­ly in­di­cates that T&T has an­oth­er scan­dal on its hand as there were no pro­cure­ment rules fol­lowed. He re­called there were al­so prob­lems with the Cabo Star, Ocean Flower II and Galleons Pas­sage which ser­viced the seabridge.

“Buy­ing a fer­ry is not buy­ing six ap­ples on the junc­tion. They’ve had a se­cret deal there. The en­tire mat­ter is in cam­ou­flage, in se­cre­cy and a lack of trans­paren­cy. I call for an im­me­di­ate cease to any agree­ment to buy this fer­ry and an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the cir­cum­stances that led to the Gov­ern­ment’s se­cret deal to ob­tain a fer­ry from Mal­ta,” Mooni­lal said.

“When you bear in mind the con­nec­tions that the Prime Min­is­ter has in Mal­ta with cer­tain mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in this coun­try, I think this deal with the fer­ry is al­most as stink as the fu­el they are now sell­ing to the pub­lic. I call for an im­me­di­ate in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the pur­chase of this fer­ry and they should de­sist now from pur­su­ing any agree­ment or arrange­ments.”

With the Galleons Pas­sage join­ing the seabridge in late 2018, Mooni­lal said there was no in­di­ca­tion an­oth­er fer­ry was need­ed. Notwith­stand­ing some com­plaints, he said the Op­po­si­tion thought the Galleons Pas­sage was set­tling in­to the route. How­ev­er, he said the new fer­ry just “dropped from the sky” and it shows a lev­el of wrong­do­ing since not even of­fi­cials of the Port Au­thor­i­ty viewed the fer­ry and the lo­cal team that vis­it­ed Mal­ta did not com­prise any­one with the re­quired tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to in­spect the ves­sel.