Akash Sama­roo

Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos

While Cari­com lead­ers are set to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an in­ter-is­land re­gion­al pas­sen­ger fer­ry, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves be­lieves while it is a nec­es­sary en­deav­our, lo­gis­ti­cal­ly it will not be easy to ex­e­cute.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing a break from meet­ings yes­ter­day on the sec­ond day of the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bar­ba­dos and asked if the top­ic of the in­ter-is­land fer­ry was raised dur­ing one of the closed-door ses­sions.

“Not yet, but that will come up when the dis­cus­sions turn to the Caribbean Sin­gle Markey and Econ­o­my (CSME) and par­tic­u­lar­ly on ma­rine and air trans­port.”

Tak­ing a deep sigh Gon­salves said, “Look, we all have to be very prac­ti­cal. If ma­rine trans­port was easy to go be­tween the is­lands, some­body would have done it al­ready.”

Gon­salves said such trans­porta­tion ex­ists on a small­er scale be­tween St Vin­cent and the rest of the Grenadines as well as trips to Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos.

“But if you want to have a pas­sen­ger fer­ry ser­vice run­ning reg­u­lar­ly, you have to watch the dol­lars and the cents. And if there was a lot of mon­ey to be made in it be­fore, some en­tre­pre­neur from Trinidad and To­ba­go would have al­ready bought such a fer­ry and do it,” he added.

“The State has to get in­volved but I don’t think it is a piece of cake,” he said.

Gon­za­les said there would be a lot of leg­isla­tive work in­volved for the ease of move­ment of peo­ple. He said it may re­quire a pi­lot pro­gramme with just a hand­ful of coun­tries.

“This is not a sim­ple thing where suc­cess is as­sured, but the He­brew peo­ple in the book of Ec­cle­si­astes, it says try some­thing in the morn­ing and if it does not work, you try some­thing else in the evening,” he said.

“We have to keep our heads on,” Gon­salves added.

On the pri­vate sec­tor lev­el, Con­nect Caribe a sub­sidiary of Bar­ba­di­an mar­itime com­pa­ny Pleion Group Inc, said it was work­ing on a re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice in Jan­u­ary 2024.

Sail­ings were set to be­gin in Au­gust 2024 but the com­pa­ny said it faced de­lays.

The com­pa­ny said it now aims to be­gin sail­ings to link Bar­ba­dos with St Lu­cia, T&T, St Vin­cent, Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua, Suri­name, and Guyana with­in the first quar­ter of this year.