Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go has now gone more than three weeks with­out a ded­i­cat­ed car­go ser­vice, and busi­ness lead­ers warn the is­land is on the brink of se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic dam­age as short­ages deep­en and ma­jor events are can­celled.

The To­ba­go arm of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said there had been no re­li­able car­go move­ment since Jan­u­ary 12.

Guardian Me­dia ob­served emp­ty shelves in su­per­mar­kets, with items such as toi­let pa­per, wa­ter, bread and meat ei­ther scarce or un­avail­able.

To­ba­go chair­man of the cham­ber, Cur­tis Williams, said the fall­out had al­ready spread across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, with con­struc­tion grind­ing to a halt and whole­salers un­able to re­plen­ish stock.

Williams said the ab­sence of bulk ce­ment had stalled both small and large con­struc­tion projects, while hard­ware sup­plies such as steel, sand and oth­er heavy ma­te­ri­als could not reach the is­land be­cause trucks over three tonnes were un­able to cross.

“All con­struc­tion projects that need ready-mix ce­ment, they are at a halt,” he said, adding that To­ba­go ef­fec­tive­ly had “no car­go at all.”

The cham­ber chair­man said the can­cel­la­tion of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma medi­um band fi­nals in To­ba­go had de­liv­ered a di­rect fi­nan­cial blow to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The an­nu­al event was ex­pect­ed to bring play­ers, spec­ta­tors and vis­i­tors to the is­land, boost­ing ho­tels, trans­port ser­vices and small ven­dors.

Williams said one es­tab­lish­ment alone records prof­its of be­tween $200,000 and $300,000 from the event, and warned the over­all im­pact could run in­to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.

“We thought the ves­sel would have been there in time so that we have a nice week­end where we can at least make some mon­ey,” he said. “But there’s noth­ing hap­pen­ing now. The week­end is just go­ing to be a qui­et one.”

He warned that if car­go ser­vice was not re­stored with­in sev­en days, To­ba­go could slide in­to a full-blown cri­sis.

“I’m hop­ing that we don’t ever have to use that word cri­sis,” Williams said. “But by the end of this week, if we don’t have a tan­gi­ble so­lu­tion, then things will start to go awry.”

Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean said the fer­ry dis­rup­tion was al­ready af­fect­ing ho­tels’ abil­i­ty to op­er­ate nor­mal­ly, with ba­sic sup­plies be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to source.

“I can’t even get a book­ing to get my ve­hi­cle across with items re­quired for the ho­tel,” MacLean said.

He said food sup­plies were among the items run­ning low and warned of im­mi­nent short­ages if ac­cess to Trinidad was not re­stored.

“I don’t know the nit­ty-grit­ty, but I could tell you some of our frozen foods are run­ning short. And if I can’t get it from Trinidad...we will run out of cer­tain items by Tues­day of this com­ing week,” he said.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T con­firmed that the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny de­part­ed the Port of Scar­bor­ough at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.15 am yes­ter­day en route to Trinidad for ad­di­tion­al re­pairs, af­ter berthing op­er­a­tions in To­ba­go were com­plet­ed.

In a state­ment, the au­thor­i­ty said the ves­sel would un­der­go the re­quired re­pairs in Trinidad and would on­ly re­turn to ser­vice af­ter in­spec­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty au­thor­i­ties.

The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was brought in to sup­port the sea bridge af­ter the lease on the Cabo Star end­ed on Jan­u­ary 12. But it sus­tained dam­age while ma­noeu­vring in the Scar­bor­ough port dur­ing sea tri­als.

To­ba­go’s busi­ness and tourism stake­hold­ers said that while state­ments and as­sur­ances con­tin­ued, press re­leas­es alone would not stem the loss­es al­ready mount­ing across the is­land as they wait for a func­tion­ing car­go so­lu­tion.