Port to be dredged for new ferry’s arrival

Be­fore the new­ly-leased Jean De La Valette fer­ry ar­rives in T&T, there will have to be dredg­ing of the wa­ters off the Port of Port-of-Spain.

This was re­vealed by Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) chair­man Lyle Alexan­der yes­ter­day.

“When­ev­er a ves­sel is not de­signed for your port….need­less to say there will have to be ad­just­ments made to ac­com­mo­date the ves­sel. We have to ac­com­mo­date the ramp, so works sim­i­lar to what was done for the Galleons Pas­sage will have to be made for this ves­sel.”

Alexan­der said PATT was al­so now re­view­ing where to dredge and the best berthing space avail­able to ac­com­mo­date the Galleons Pas­sage and JDLV. How­ev­er, he said it was too ear­ly to tell what would be the cost of that ad­just­ment.

Pressed on if there was a prop­er ten­der­ing process of the ves­sel, Alexan­der replied: “Of course, of course.”

But when told that there was no con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers re­gard­ing the leas­ing arrange­ment and when the ten­der had been ad­ver­tised and by whom, Alexan­der side­stepped these ques­tions.

“At this stage of the game, I will not touch any of those ques­tions,” he replied.

But chair­man of the To­ba­go arm of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Di­ane Hadad says the JDLV will not be able to solve the seabridge woes. She said To­bag­o­ni­ans have grown so ac­cus­tomed to the seabridge fi­as­co they are now numb.

“The Gov­ern­ment is do­ing what they want. They are a dic­ta­tor­ship Gov­ern­ment. They are not work­ing with the peo­ple,” Hadad said, adding the cham­ber had been elim­i­nat­ed com­plete­ly from the ten­der­ing process.

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment mem­ber Har­ry Ra­goo­nanan mean­while said he saw no ten­der be­ing ad­ver­tised and won­dered if an eval­u­a­tion had been done.

“It gives the im­pres­sion that the en­tire the ac­qui­si­tion process was fishy and flawed.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment owes the coun­try an­swers.

“We don’t know any­thing about this boat, which is wor­ry­ing. Who are the boat’s own­ers? We don’t know if they are friends of the PNM.”

Ques­tions emailed to T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute and di­rect­ed to head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Dion Ab­dool, were not re­spond­ed to.

George al­so did not re­spond to a text mes­sage sent by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

_{Source: guardian.co.tt}