Sto­ries DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter ask­ing for time to re­spond to an an­nounce­ment by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali that his coun­try formed a com­pa­ny with Bar­ba­dos and T&T on Jan­u­ary 4 to es­tab­lish a re­gion­al fer­ry sys­tem, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan shirked re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, point­ing to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Sinanan was speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia tour of the con­struc­tion of ad­di­tion­al lanes north­bound and south­bound along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Chase Vil­lage, on Sun­day.

On Fri­day, Ali said the com­pa­ny had al­ready been formed the day pri­or. When con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day, Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia he was gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject and would re­spond at the tour.

How­ev­er, broached on the mat­ter again, he had lit­tle to up­date. Sinanan would on­ly say that a fer­ry sys­tem to ser­vice the Caribbean is “noth­ing new” and is in­tend­ed to en­sure the re­gion feeds it­self.

“Af­ter the Cari­com sum­mit, a team was put in place to look at the whole sys­tem. They en­gaged the CDB (Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank) bank out of Guyana and a re­port was sub­mit­ted to the lead­ers. It is some­thing that is be­ing dis­cussed at the lead­er­ship and with the ex­perts to see how it will work be­cause the idea of that is to en­sure that we have food se­cu­ri­ty around the Cari­com is­lands,” he said.

The min­is­ter said be­tween Ju­ly 3 to 5 at the 45th Meet­ing of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), which co­in­cid­ed with the 50th an­niver­sary of the re­gion­al bloc, the top­ic of a fer­ry sys­tem was raised.

He said Grena­da was al­so in­clud­ed in that dis­cus­sion apart from Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The min­is­ter said fur­ther de­tails were dis­cussed at the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po which ran from Oc­to­ber 20 to 22 in Guyana.

“When you have some­thing like this hap­pen­ing at this lev­el, the at­tor­ney gen­er­als from all the ter­ri­to­ries, they would be the one deal­ing with it, to make sure the frame­work is in place. As I said, this is noth­ing new, it was dis­cussed at length by the lead­ers. So, once the frame­work is in place, then you go out to the ac­tu­al op­er­a­tions of it. A study was done, my in­for­ma­tion is that the study was favourable, that some­thing like that is need­ed and like every­thing else you have to start some­where and then you build out in­to the per­fect sce­nario,” he said.

How­ev­er, af­ter promis­ing to gath­er in­for­ma­tion, Sinanan opt­ed against di­vulging even the name of the com­pa­ny when asked, as he re­it­er­at­ed that it was not un­der his purview.

“As min­is­ter of works in Trinidad, I don’t want to di­vulge too much in­for­ma­tion on it. Very soon, the lead­ers of Cari­com will make an an­nounce­ment on the fer­ry ser­vice, how it will op­er­ate and how it will be fi­nanced,” he said.

Prod­ded on if a com­pa­ny was formed, he said the at­tor­ney gen­er­al would be bet­ter in­formed.

“Again, at this stage, it is be­ing led by the At­tor­neys Gen­er­al of the dif­fer­ent re­gions. So, you know, some­times we want to jump out and say this or say that. As min­is­ter of works and trans­port in Trinidad, I have to be very care­ful as to the in­for­ma­tion that I put out be­cause this is some­thing not be­ing han­dled by Trinidad and To­ba­go, this is han­dled by the lead­ers of Cari­com,” he said.

Sinanan al­so dis­missed ques­tions on what ap­peared to be a pre­ma­ture an­nounce­ment since by his ac­count, the for­ma­tion of the com­pa­ny was still in an em­bry­on­ic stage.

“There is noth­ing neg­a­tive, there is noth­ing pre­ma­ture and I can tell you a lot of work would have gone in­to it and at that lev­el the in­for­ma­tion will flow down to the pub­lic.”

The min­is­ter not­ed that every Cari­com is­land has a strength, adding that a re­gion­al fer­ry would al­low for greater trade of the best each na­tion has to of­fer.

Calls and What­sApp mes­sages sent to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

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