Some To­ba­go stake­hold­ers re­main op­ti­mistic that the ar­rival of the MV Em­prende­do­ra will bring much-need­ed re­lief to the is­land, but there are con­cerns that things may change quick­ly as a re­sult of con­tin­ued chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with in­ter-is­land trav­el.

The ves­sel docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain, from Venezuela on Sat­ur­day to fill the gap in car­go trans­porta­tion fol­low­ing a fire on­board the MV Cabo Star on Au­gust 23. It is meant to trans­port con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al in the first in­stance as was pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed by Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der.

As the ves­sel and its crew are await­ing ex­emp­tions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, hote­liers and at least one su­per­mar­ket chain are hope­ful that things will nor­malise soon.

They say oth­er­wise, a sit­u­a­tion they have been man­ag­ing could quick­ly get out of con­trol.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to see­ing the ben­e­fit of that. How­ev­er, the re­al­i­ty is that we’re still sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­hind,” said the pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) Al­pha Lorde in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

He said while they wel­come any ad­di­tion­al ton­nage that can be trans­port­ed be­tween both is­lands, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the life of the av­er­age res­i­dent will be im­pact­ed in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.

“The ques­tion is if it con­tin­ues like this, what will we have to do should we not be able to get cer­tain sup­plies on a reg­u­lar ba­sis? Do we have to cut back on of­fer­ings be­cause we’re not able to get this? Do we have to change what we of­fer be­cause the parts or the sup­plies rel­a­tive to it now can­not be re­ceived with the fre­quen­cy that we need to have it,” he ques­tioned.

“We haven’t had that im­pact as yet but it’s not far off in the com­ing if we don’t re­alise change soon­er rather than lat­er,” Lorde warned.

Nev­er­the­less, he said he has not re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that mem­bers have in­curred an uptick in costs be­cause of scarci­ty. How­ev­er, he said he would not be sur­prised if small­er mem­bers en­coun­tered this is­sue.

The biggest con­cern was that op­er­a­tional costs would climb the longer in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion re­mains par­tial­ly func­tion­ing.

“An in­dus­try that is now find­ing its legs af­ter COVID, it’s an un­for­tu­nate time for us to have any­thing that’s go­ing to have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on dai­ly op­er­a­tion,” he said.

Mean­while, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of View­port Su­per­mar­ket, which has stores in Canaan and Scar­bor­ough, said she has had to piv­ot as bread from the Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny (which has to de­liv­er its goods via the car­go ves­sel) was in short sup­ply.

The chain has turned to bak­eries on the is­land and has al­so been forced to sup­ply few­er eggs. De­spite this, she said they have kept costs down.

“The prices have re­mained the same to us and we just main­tained the same prices. We’re hope­ful. It’s te­dious, it’s ex­tra work, it’s dif­fi­cult but we’re hop­ing,” she said.

The MV Cabo Star has been down for al­most three weeks af­ter a fire de­stroyed its aux­il­iary en­gine.

Re­pairs to the ves­sel are on­go­ing.