Sea travel a major deterrent to tourism

However, the best laid plans are easily destroyed by the ineptness of the inter-island ferry service.

Sailing schedules are altered at short notice to the chagrin of passengers who may be stranded either in Trinidad or Tobago.

The callousness of the managers of this service and the disrespect for the users is symptomatic of all past and present governments in their failure to plan and maintain a functional sea bridge.

The present system uses two passenger ferries for passengers, vehicles and light goods. Invariably, one or the other of the ferries is out of service and the passenger service is thrown into disarray.

On April 6, passengers and vehicles were forced to wait at the ferry terminal in Port-of-Spain until 11 am for a sailing that was scheduled for 6.30 am. Vehicles and passengers were only informed of the delay at around 6 am, after waiting in some cases since 3.45 am in the vehicle line.

The port management never saw it fit to inform passengers by way of the public media; plus, no signage was provided at the terminus and security officers had no information to share. Where tickets had been bought online, in this case one week before travel, the management could have provided information on the change in travel time at least 24 hours before through email.

The Tobago end was even worse as the sailing for April 11, at 4 pm, was cancelled again without any notification, public or otherwise, to ticketed passengers.

Consequently, passengers returning to Trinidad were forced to seek further accommodation after they had booked out of their rented apartments/hotels. Especially, as the Tobago terminal was locked, forcing people to sit on the streets outside.

Why has it been so difficult for all our governments since independence in 1962 to institute and provide a reliable ferry service? It should be likened to a road between Port-of-Spain and any other place in Trinidad in terms of the ease of getting there.

Fifty-five years later our ferry service is a dismal failure. Boats have come, boats have gone, while successive governments fail to get it right. Are we as a people so inept that we have chosen (four PNM, one NAR, one UNC and one PP) prime ministers through their parties to govern and they have successively failed to satisfy the simple need of a reliable ferry service? We as a people must demand that the Government solves the sea bridge problem now — not tomorrow or next year. If we do not demand performance from our governments we will get none.

ALBAN C SCOTT Woodbrook, PoS