End seabridge woes

THE EDITOR: The world's longest sea-crossing bridge which stretches 34 miles and cost £14 billion to build opened this week in China. The world continues to develop at a rapid pace while we continue to suffer. The Galleons Passage, recently purchased, is now experiencing electrical problems and was not in service for days.

In providing an up­date on the vessel that cost US$17.4 million (which had to be tak­en out of ser­vice), reports say there was n electrical prob­lem with one of the en­gines. The ves­sel was on its way to To­ba­go when it start­ed to experience problems. It was forced to sail on its three re­main­ing en­gines so it had to go slow­er, newspaper reports indicated.

On Oc­to­ber 8, the Galleons Pas­sage made its first com­mer­cial sail­ing to To­ba­go in four hours. Two Sun­days ago, Nid­co in a press re­lease, ad­vised pas­sen­gers that the normally scheduled 6 am sail­ing from Port-of-Spain and 4 pm from Scar­bor­ough had been can­celled, as the ves­sel was docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain to ad­dress elec­tri­cal is­sues.

The T&T Spir­it ac­com­mo­dat­ed the af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers on its sail­ings while the Galleons was being repaired after only approximately a week of service. “The ves­sel will re­turn to ser­vice on the next sched­uled date, that is, Wednes­day last and while the ves­sel was be­ing fixed it missed five sail­ings. We live in a country where a lot of talk takes place in parliament with little or no action.

The government needs to end our sea bridge woes by building a bridge from Trinidad to Tobago. The normal excuse is there is no money to do certain projects, but where are the millions that have reported to have been unaccounted for in certain ministries? The current woes on the seabridge leaves travellers stranded on a day to day basis.

A bridge linking TT should be seriously considered and don't tell the people it can't be done. When Dr Keith Rowley was in opposition he said no amount of money in the western hemisphere and no engineering known to man could pay for or build such a bridge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are many experts that say it can be done. When you consider the billions that have been wasted by governments past and present it makes you wonder how much more developed Trinidad and Tobago could have been. The government finds it easy to spend money, but not to spend it productively.

SIMON WRIGHT, Chaguanas