Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine says a re­place­ment for the MV Cabo Star, the roll-on/roll-off fer­ry that has served To­ba­go’s in­ter-is­land seabridge since 2017, has been iden­ti­fied and sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for ap­proval. The cur­rent ves­sel’s con­tract, man­aged by Bridge­mans Ser­vices Group, ends on Jan­u­ary 12, 2026, and will not be re­newed.

“We have an eval­u­a­tion team that re­turned from Spain and Greece last week and I am go­ing to Cab­i­net this Thurs­day to present to Cab­i­net the op­tion that those that did the eval­u­a­tion said we should go with,” Au­gus­tine said at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing last night. He added that the pro­posed ves­sel could have “as much as 100 cab­ins be­cause we lis­ten to your stake­hold­ers.”

Au­gus­tine re­ject­ed claims that the gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to con­ceal the Cabo Star’s de­par­ture, say­ing dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers be­gan months ago. “A con­ver­sa­tion was had with the stake­hold­ers on June 11, 2025, right in my of­fice… They ac­tu­al­ly said to the min­is­ter this is what we want. Go and find a boat that can re­flect what we ac­tu­al­ly want.”