Government takes ferry delivery February 9

Government is expected to take delivery of the US$17.4 million fast ferry Galleons Passage on or around February 9. Finance Minister Colm Imbert made this disclosure yesterday on Twitter. He said, “It will set sail for the Caribbean shortly thereafter.”

At last Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, Imbert said the vessel would leave China next month and should arrive in TT in April.

He said several rigorous checks were done to ensure the new catamaran met all the requirements to operate on the domestic seabridge. These included inspections by Lloyd’s Register of Hong Kong, Schulte Marine of Australia and experts from the University of TT’s Maritime Campus. Legal checks on the vessel were done by British law firm Haynes and Boone. Imbert also said US firm Dun and Bradstreet was engaged to do “a financial and forensic check on everybody involved.” The vessel is owned by Sea Transport Corporation of Australia and was built at the Nansha Shipyard in Guangzhou, China. Imbert dismissed claims from former transport minister Devant Maharaj and other people about the vessel’s procurement being questionable, that the vessel was not new and that it was stuck in China. He explained that the first stage of shipbuilding is steel-cutting and the last stage is sea trials. “The steel for the new inter-island ferry was cut by the Nansha Shipyard in Guandong, China on March 4, 2015,” Imbert said. He said the final sea trials for the vessel took place in December. “The ferry is brand new,” Imbert reiterated.