Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

With less than a month to go be­fore the MV Cabo Star is ex­pect­ed to leave Trinidad and To­ba­go, a for­mer Port ex­ec­u­tive has warned that if a re­place­ment ves­sel is not al­ready near­by, it will be im­pos­si­ble for it to be op­er­a­tional by Jan­u­ary 12.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive said the con­cern is not the sale or de­par­ture of the Cabo Star it­self, but the shrink­ing time­line for a re­place­ment ves­sel to ar­rive, be cer­ti­fied, in­spect­ed and test­ed.

“The prob­lem is not the Cabo Star leav­ing,” he said. “The prob­lem is that there are on­ly about 23 days left, and if a re­place­ment ves­sel is not al­ready close by, it will not be ready in time.”

The Cabo Star is sched­uled to be with­drawn from ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 12, rais­ing doubts about whether a new ves­sel could re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be­gin op­er­a­tions the fol­low­ing day if it has not yet ar­rived in the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive, once a ves­sel en­ters Trinidad and To­ba­go, it must un­der­go in­spec­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (MSD) be­fore it can legal­ly op­er­ate.

“The ves­sel has to be cer­ti­fied to work in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion,” he said. “That process on­ly be­gins af­ter the ves­sel ar­rives.”

He point­ed to the in­tro­duc­tion of the Cabo Star to the sea bridge in 2017 as an ex­am­ple. Al­though the ves­sel ar­rived in mid-Ju­ly, around Ju­ly 16, it did not en­ter reg­u­lar ser­vice im­me­di­ate­ly. In­stead, it un­der­went in­spec­tions, prepa­ra­tions and test runs be­fore be­ing of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned on Ju­ly 24.

“That shows that ar­rival in the coun­try and readi­ness to op­er­ate are two dif­fer­ent things,” he said.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, he ex­plained, is not au­to­mat­ic and de­pends on a range of tech­ni­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments.

“Once the ves­sel gets here, there are things that have to be done with MSD that will de­ter­mine how soon it can go in­to ser­vice. All those cer­ti­fi­ca­tions have to be in place,” he said.

As a re­sult, the time­line has now be­come crit­i­cal.

“I think what is caus­ing the pan­ic is the time­line,” he said, not­ing that the length of the process varies de­pend­ing on sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing the type of ves­sel, where it is com­ing from and the re­quire­ments for its in­tend­ed op­er­a­tions.

“It’s not so much how long it will take. How long it takes de­pends on a whole lot of cir­cum­stances,” he added.

He said tem­po­rary so­lu­tions have on­ly worked in the past when a suit­able ves­sel was al­ready near­by, cit­ing the Tem­pranado­ra, which was avail­able in Venezuela.

“The most im­por­tant ques­tion now is whether a re­place­ment ves­sel ex­ists and where it is,” he said. “That is the key ques­tion.”

Mean­while, head of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce Cur­tis Williams, speak­ing on be­half of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, said stake­hold­ers are call­ing on Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John to pro­vide clar­i­ty on whether a re­place­ment ves­sel has been iden­ti­fied and when it is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive.

“What I can push for is for the Min­is­ter to an­nounce to us, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the sta­tus of what’s hap­pen­ing in terms of a re­place­ment ves­sel and the time­line for its ar­rival,” Williams said.

He not­ed that even once a ves­sel ar­rives, it could take two to three weeks or longer to com­plete cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and li­cens­ing.

Busi­ness­es, he said, are grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly anx­ious as the Jan­u­ary 12 dead­line ap­proach­es with no of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion on what will re­place the Cabo Star.

“We all knew that the ves­sel was leav­ing ear­ly Jan­u­ary, but we haven’t heard any­thing about the re­place­ment,” he said. “The time is draw­ing near and we’re not hear­ing any­thing from cen­tral gov­ern­ment. We’re all sit­ting like a time bomb. We re­al­ly need to know what’s hap­pen­ing so that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can plan ac­cord­ing­ly.”