[UPDATED] New Coast Guard vessels ready to head for Trinidad and Tobago

THE Coast Guard's fleet will soon be reinforced by the arrival of the two new Cape Class patrol vessels, the TTCG Port of Spain and TTCG Scarborough.

In a statement on Friday the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) announced that Government has taken delivery of both vessels from shipbuilder Austal at its shipyard in Perth, Australia.

The vessels are scheduled to leave Australia on a heavy lift ship on May 20. Weather permitting, the OPM said they will arrive in Trinidad and Tobago in mid-July, after a six-seven-week journey.

A video posted on the OPM's Facebook page showed the Port of Spain and Scarborough being put through their paces at sea. It also showed the deployment of smaller interceptor vessels, which come with both of the patrol boats.

The OPM said the boats are "welcomed additions to our national security and economic marine protection, as they have been built to specification, approved by the TT Coast Guard (TTCG), to provide the necessary monitoring and patrolling of all our marine acreage."

The OPM reminded the population the genesis of this development was on May 24, 2018 when the Prime Minister, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister (now Energy Minister) Stuart Young and then foreign and Caricom affairs minister Dennis Moses met with then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop "to discuss the procurement and financing of the vessels using their Export Financing Corporation (EFIC) and the Australian Defence Fund."

Speaking in Parliament in January 2019, the Prime Minister said Cabinet decided to buy the two Cape Class vessels on July 26, 2018. That decision also involved acquiring two fast ferry catamarans for the domestic seabridge, one from Austal and the other from another Australian shipbuilder, Incat.

At the time, Dr Rowley said the rigorous procurement process followed for the acquisition of the Cape Class vessels was a far cry from what was done between 2010 and 2015 by the People's Partnership government to acquire naval vesssels from Dutch shipbuilder Damen and one vessel from China.

"There was no transparency in the procuring of the vessels from Damen and in fact, financing was not even properly in place for the payment for the vessels ordered from Damen. It fell to this Government to arrange financing and payment for these vessels after they were delivered and we were never even told were ordered until they arrived in TT."

He added the procurement of the Chinese vessel CG60 was worse.

"There was no proper evaluation as to the suitability of the vessel for the TTCG and there was no financing in place for the payment for the vessel."