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Thursday, June 12, 2025

Sinanan: Ask AG about Caribbean ferry

by

Dareece Polo
522 days ago
20240108
Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, left, and Seereeram Brothers Limited executive chairman Shaym Seereeram walk during a media tour of the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway during the construction of additional lanes north bound and south bound between Chaguanas and Chase Village, yesterday.

Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, left, and Seereeram Brothers Limited executive chairman Shaym Seereeram walk during a media tour of the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway during the construction of additional lanes north bound and south bound between Chaguanas and Chase Village, yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

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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