Sinking feeling

CONSIDERING that nearly $4 billion has been spent over the last decade on its personnel expenditure alone, the Coast Guard has questions to answer about its capacity.

This is especially so considering the recent interception, then loss, of a mysterious pirogue which has left citizens with a sinking feeling.

At 2.22 pm on January 25, authorities received a report about the vessel, which appeared to have five corpses onboard. A patrol boat was dispatched. On January 26, at 12.45 am, a towline was secured.

But hours later, that connection separated; the boat vanished.

According to the Coast Guard, this was because of the object’s “severely deteriorated” state and “prevailing sea conditions.”

Yet considering those two factors, was a towline the best plan? What assessment, if any, was undertaken beforehand?

Can the Coast Guard secure such boats aboard another vessel to transport it to land?

At what point did anyone notice the connection had been severed? Did towing technique play a role?

We may never know, especially since the vanished boat took all forensic evidence with it.

In the meantime, the incident has damaged the Coast Guard’s reputation, with members of the public sensing something fishy and others crying incompetence.

The loss of this drifting vessel symbolises the surging tide of trials faced by the defender of the country’s maritime safety.

The illicit trafficking, piracy and illegal immigration challenges are coming from all directions: Venezuela on one side and West Africa on another.

There were eerie echoes of a 2021 incident in which another pirogue, registered in Mauritania, was discovered off Tobago. That was one of about seven such vessels found in the Caribbean and Brazil in one year, in a trend in which people trying to reach Europe drift into the Atlantic Ocean.

Compounding the problems posed by such “ghost ships” is the resurgence of a global “dark fleet” to evade sanctions on countries like Russia and Venezuela.

This looms large over the 2024 Tobago oil spill, the response to which, especially by the Coast Guard, left much wanting, notwithstanding the painstaking clean-up process, successful efforts by the Government to arrest a tugboat and the pursuit of $244 million in damages.

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine on January 23 deemed the Coast Guard’s base in Scarborough unfit to “mind swine,” and said Tobago does not have a vessel to patrol. That is astonishing, but hardly surprising.

However, it’s not just a question of the availability, or lack thereof, of a working fleet of small interceptors or big offshore patrol vessels.

The rampant rate of gun violence in this country has long been the pre-eminent indicator that, when it comes to the Coast Guard and our porous border, we may not be getting value for money.

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