Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is hope­ful the Jean de la Valette, the fer­ry re­cent­ly leased for the seabridge, will ar­rive in T&T next month so that it can put in­to ser­vice and al­low for much-need­ed re­pairs on one of the ves­sels cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing the route.

Sinanan, who was for an up­date on the pro­posed ar­rival date for the fer­ry yes­ter­day, said the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Nid­co) is in con­stant con­tact with the own­ers of the Mal­tese fer­ry.

“I am hop­ing that once every­thing goes well, we should have that fer­ry here by the end of May,” he said.

“Once that hap­pens, then we will be able to take one of the fer­ries off and send it to dry­dock so we will still main­tain two fer­ries on the seabridge.”

He said from all in­di­ca­tions the Galleons Pas­sage and T&T Spir­it are work­ing as ex­pect­ed.

“Both fer­ries are op­er­at­ing right now. We do not have a chal­lenge but we are hop­ing to get this third fer­ry so we can put the Spir­it in­to dry dock,” he said.

Com­ment­ing on a video that re­cent­ly sur­faced about the sale of the MV Panora­ma, Sinanan said: “The Panora­ma was tak­en out of ser­vice in 2004. Ob­vi­ous­ly, who bought it would have un­der­stood we have to re­fur­bish it. I am sure when the T&T Ex­press is sold, the same thing is go­ing to hap­pen. What is the is­sue?

“We can’t do that sort of re­fur­bish­ment and the cost to us is some­thing we have to ex­am­ine. We just spent $70 mil­lion on the T&T Spir­it and the T&T Ex­press will cost a lot more than that, so some­body may take the de­ci­sion to buy it at that price and spend that mon­ey on it be­cause they have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to main­tain it. Do we have that? That is the big ques­tion,” he said.

Point­ing out that times had changed as the MV Panora­ma sailed at 17 knots, Sinanan asked: “Can you imag­ine a pas­sen­ger ves­sel go­ing to To­ba­go now at 17 knots and tak­ing six hours?

“You could imag­ine what is go­ing to come out of To­ba­go? So to say we should keep the Panora­ma and re­fur­bish it and spend all this mon­ey and have a 17 knots ves­sel…the Panora­ma just did not suit our pur­pose at this point in time. We have a car­go ves­sel go­ing to To­ba­go at 19 knots and peo­ple are com­plain­ing.”

The Jean de la Valette is ex­pect­ed to ser­vice the sea bridge for one year while Gov­ern­ment awaits the ar­rival of the two new ves­sels from Aus­tralia.