Billions spent on Coast Guard vessels, borders exposed

On Sep­tem­ber 6, Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel told the pub­lic that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard’s larg­er ves­sels—in­clud­ing its two Austal Cape-class pa­trol ves­sels and six Damen Stan pa­trol ves­sels—were cur­rent­ly not in op­er­a­tion.

Daniel’s ad­mis­sion and sub­se­quent ex­pla­na­tion—that de­liv­ery parts for main­te­nance were im­pact­ed by ship­ping woes—from an agency charged with pro­tect­ing the coun­try’s bor­ders was alarm­ing and came at a time when the coun­try’s streets are flood­ed with guns—from le­gal and il­le­gal ports of en­try, which has con­tributed to ris­ing mur­ders in the coun­try.

In this Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we look at the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­ble spots, how much tax­pay­ers have spent in a bid to keep the coun­try’s bor­ders safe, and whether, in fact, they have re­ceived val­ue for the mon­ey spent.

Asha Javeed, Joshua Seemu­n­gal and Shane Su­perville

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) now has about four func­tion­al small boats, out of 14 ves­sels un­der its charge, to pa­trol the coun­try’s coastal bor­ders, which are 452 nau­ti­cal miles of coast­line. The wa­ter bor­ders, which have long proved a large­ly un­guard­able gate­way for the smug­gling of guns, drugs, oth­er il­lic­it items, and even peo­ple, a large amount be­ing from neigh­bour­ing Venezuela in re­cent years (16,523 il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants took part in a reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise in 2019), are of­ten de­scribed as porous.

With re­duced boats to pa­trol the wa­ters, T&T’s il­le­gal points of en­try vary from 123—a fig­ure dis­closed in a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) re­port laid in Par­lia­ment on March 1, which came from a sub­mis­sion from the coun­try’s Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) dat­ed Oc­to­ber 21, 2022—to 264—a fig­ure dis­closed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds six months lat­er at a Mar­itime Nar­co­traf­fick­ing on Sep­tem­ber 10. The bor­ders are very vul­ner­a­ble.

Ac­cord­ing to the sec­ond re­port of the March JSC re­port, which was an in­quiry in­to the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, and pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens, cur­rent­ly sev­en of the 14 ves­sels avail­able to the TTCG are op­er­a­ble. “The in­abil­i­ty to op­er­ate at full ca­pac­i­ty stems from dif­fi­cul­ties in procur­ing spares and oth­er equip­ment for the re­main­ing ves­sels. The Trinidad Coast Guard re­port­ed, via the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, to the Com­mit­tee on No­vem­ber 28, 2022, that four out of the eight pa­trol boats are op­er­a­tional,” the re­port stat­ed.

To use the fig­ure in the JSC re­port, of the coun­try’s 132 iden­ti­fi­able ports—123 il­le­gal ones and nine le­gal ones—if all ports are be­ing pa­trolled, that works out to a ra­tio of one boat for 33 ports. To use Hinds’ fig­ure of the coun­try’s iden­ti­fi­able ports—264 il­le­gal ones and nine le­gal ones—if all ports are be­ing pa­trolled, that works out to a ra­tio of one boat for 66 ports.

To as­cer­tain the reg­u­lar­i­ty and fre­quen­cy of pa­trols, Guardian Me­dia took a four-hour ex­cur­sion that be­gan at Ch­aguara­mas, near the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters, two weeks ago.

Sev­er­al ves­sels, in­clud­ing the TTS Port of Spain CG 41 ship, were seen at the Staubles Bay jet­ty, Ch­aguara­mas. On that jour­ney, on­ly one Coast Guard pa­trol in a small Rigid-Hulled In­flat­able Boat (RHIB) was sight­ed.

The ship did not ap­pear to be in op­er­a­tion, as it re­mained sta­tion­ary some dis­tance away from the jet­ty, be­fore re­vers­ing.

The TTCG, ac­cord­ing to the sub­mis­sion to the JSC dat­ed Oc­to­ber 28, 2022, on­ly seized two weapons—one SIG Sauer pis­tol and one shot­gun, 11 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, and one mag­a­zine—be­tween the pe­ri­od 2018 and 2022.

The JSC re­port, quot­ing an SSA sub­mis­sion, al­so stat­ed that while “high-pow­ered weapons, re­volvers, and pis­tols are com­ing through Venezuela via boats,” not one of those boats was in­ter­cept­ed by the TTCG be­tween 2020 and 2022.

Bor­der Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty

In March, the pas­sage of the Gulf­stream, be­ing towed by a tug, the So­lo Creed in­to the coun­try’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters be­tween the is­lands with­out de­tec­tion by the TTCG is a promi­nent ex­am­ple of the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It led to an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter off the Cove in To­ba­go, with, to date, no one be­ing held ac­count­able for it.

But over 15 years ago, the coun­try’s bor­der vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty was laid bare by the TTCG in its ar­bi­tra­tion hear­ings be­tween the T&T Gov­ern­ment and BAE Sys­tems on its failed Off­shore Pa­trol Pro­gramme (OPV) project.

In his wit­ness state­ment, Cap­tain Mark Williams, who was the TTCG of­fi­cial in charge of the project in the UK, ob­served that T&T “is al­so a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point for il­le­gal drugs to North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. Our in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ed that rogue el­e­ments of the Na­tion­al Guard of Venezuela might have been es­cort­ing drug ship­ments to Trinidad. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia (RFAC) al­so op­er­ates in our re­gion and is known to traf­fic in large ship­ments of nar­cotics.

“It is im­por­tant that in the con­text of these func­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the off­shore func­tions, the OPVs would be able to op­er­ate as a sin­gle mar­itime unit as well as a moth­er ship for ac­com­pa­ny­ing as­sets. They need­ed to have con­sid­er­able self-pro­tec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty against both sur­face and air tar­gets, giv­en the types of threats that the OPVs and their ac­com­pa­ny­ing as­sets were like­ly to en­counter in their in­tend­ed op­er­a­tions,” Williams added.

Dur­ing his cam­paign­ing for the 2010 elec­tion, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning posit­ed that the drug lords had want­ed him out of pow­er be­cause of his goal to erad­i­cate the drug trade.

Three months af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment can­celled the or­der for the three OPVs based on their missed dead­lines and the weapon­ry on the ves­sels did not con­form to con­tract spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

In its 2011 In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol Strat­e­gy Re­ports, the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment not­ed: “How­ev­er, the new gov­ern­ment has de-em­pha­sised re­gion­al ef­forts and as­sis­tance pro­grammes, in­clud­ing some se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed projects that would im­pact counter-nar­cotics ef­forts to fo­cus greater at­ten­tion on do­mes­tic is­sues.”

On the OPVs, the Coun­try Re­port on T&T stat­ed: “There are no plans to sup­plant that deep-wa­ter pa­trol ca­pa­bil­i­ty in the short term.”

It said the Gov­ern­ment “strug­gles to ef­fec­tive­ly co­or­di­nate and im­ple­ment its drug-con­trol as­sets, and main­te­nance is­sues, cor­rup­tion, and gaps in the leg­isla­tive frame­work re­main chal­lenges.”

Chal­lenges at the TTCG

In­formed sources sug­gest that the Coast Guard’s ros­ter should have about four to 18 small Coast Guard craft—which con­sist of four in­ter­cep­tors, six pirogues, and eight RHIBs—to pa­trol the wa­ters dai­ly.

Guardian Me­dia was told that on­ly two RHIBs and two pirogues are func­tion­al as the Coast Guard’s in­ter­cep­tors are no longer fit for use giv­en their age and us­age over the years.

“The Coast Guard hasn’t had in­ter­cep­tors for over a year. The hulls of the in­ter­cep­tors have gone be­yond their shelf life, so they put them out of ser­vice be­cause to keep re­pair­ing them doesn’t make any sense. The last time we got in­ter­cep­tors was in 2012. They were re­built, which ex­tend­ed their func­tion­al­i­ty a bit, but the way they were used is be­yond their ser­vice life,” a source ex­plained.

One Coast Guard of­fi­cer com­plained that while small­er off­shore pa­trol boats are used in in­ter­cep­tion ex­er­cis­es, these as­sets do not of­fer as much cov­er­age as the larg­er ves­sels. The RHIBs, which are de­ployed from larg­er ves­sels to re­spond to emer­gen­cies, are al­so lim­it­ed in how many sailors can fit aboard and how long they can re­main at sea be­fore re­turn­ing to base for re­fu­elling.

A source said that one of the eight ves­sels await­ing up­grades—the CG 23—was ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tional by Oc­to­ber. How­ev­er, he said that the ves­sel, which re­cent­ly un­der­went main­te­nance in Suri­name, may not be in­clud­ed in op­er­a­tions due to a staff short­age.

He said there were not enough sailors, with most of the man­pow­er as­signed to the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay Head­quar­ters.

“At this time, we have just about half the crew need­ed to op­er­ate the ship, so even when it comes on­line, it won’t be able to be out on the wa­ter. The rea­son for the crew short­age is due to sailors be­ing giv­en oth­er en­gage­ments and as­sign­ments, like for the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) or land pa­trols. Right now the men do­ing the work on the Austal ves­sels are on 12-hour shifts, and they even took men from this to do joint pa­trols, so they hard­ly have the tech­ni­cians avail­able,” he added.

“If ves­sels are down and there is a re­quire­ment for more pa­trols be­cause of crime, the Gov­ern­ment will still ask the Coast Guard for more pa­trols. The Gov­ern­ment may be jus­ti­fied by say­ing there are no ves­sels avail­able, but ves­sels need their crew.”

Boats back in 14 months

For his part, Hinds has since promised that the ves­sels will be back in op­er­a­tion with­in 14 months.

“Coast Guard ves­sels, like any oth­er piece of equip­ment, re­quire ser­vice. From time to time, there is manda­to­ry ser­vice. Like a mo­tor car, af­ter every 5,000 miles, you should go get a man­u­fac­tur­er’s ser­vice. That is the way of the world. Ves­sels will al­ways be out of ser­vice. Ves­sels will al­ways be dry-docked for ma­jor works.

“I have been hear­ing those (com­ments about porous bor­ders) for aeons, and we have al­ready in­di­cat­ed that we have about 264 il­le­gal points of en­try, and be­ing as close as Venezuela, there have al­ways been some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. The im­pacts are dev­as­tat­ing—not on­ly do they fu­el vi­o­lence and crime with­in our bor­ders, but they al­so strain our economies and dis­rupt the so­cial co­he­sion of our com­mu­ni­ties. In T&T, our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges in de­tect­ing and in­ter­dict­ing nar­cotics at both le­git­i­mate and il­le­git­i­mate ports of en­try,” he said at the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States 2024 meet­ing of CI­CAD’s Group of Ex­perts on Mar­itime Nar­co Traf­fick­ing.

In 2019, speak­ing with re­porters on the deck of the TTS Quinam dur­ing a pa­trol around Trinidad’s coast, then Com­modore Don Po­lo ad­mit­ted that the sheer vol­ume of wa­ter sur­round­ing the is­land was a chal­lenge for sailors, es­pe­cial­ly at night when vis­i­bil­i­ty was low.

“Be­cause of the size of the area we need to be pa­trolling, you won’t find any ves­sels stay­ing in one par­tic­u­lar area for too long,” he had said.

Po­lo had said that the Coast Guard con­ducts about 2,000 pa­trols per year as they have tried to po­si­tion ves­sels in ar­eas that were thought to be more sus­cep­ti­ble to smug­gling than oth­ers but said it was dif­fi­cult as traf­fick­ers of­ten changed their routes, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to keep track of which ar­eas were be­ing used next.

Sev­er­al fish­er­folk re­port­ed that for years, sight­ing a Coast Guard pa­trol has been a rar­i­ty. One fish­er­man off the coast of Ca­roni, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Mar­cus, said he could count on one hand how many times he has seen Coast Guard ves­sels.

“We might see them maybe once every three months. We feel un­safe out here. I’d feel more com­fort­able if the Coast Guard was around. It isn’t a nice sit­u­a­tion, and I am grate­ful I nev­er had any run-ins with ban­dits or gun­men at sea in my years, but it’s still a se­ri­ous risk to come out here af­ter dark and fish.”

Cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) Gary Aboud lament­ed that fish­er­folk re­mained at risk from traf­fick­ers giv­en the low Coast Guard pres­ence, de­scrib­ing traf­fick­ers as mov­ing “willy nil­ly” with lit­tle re­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties. “We asked for mo­bile Coast Guard sta­tions to be placed on the North Coast so we could have more of a phys­i­cal pres­ence to mon­i­tor the com­ing and go­ing of ves­sels; we have noth­ing like that. The head­quar­ters where we have a thou­sand Coast Guard of­fi­cers do­ing noth­ing with­out ves­sels is a cha­rade, and you see the ef­fects on the street.”

Re­tired Coast Guard Lt Com­modoreNor­man Din­di­al told Guardian Me­dia that dur­ing op­er­a­tions smug­glers of­ten threw il­le­gal car­go over­board once a Coast Guard ves­sel was sight­ed.

He said this could ac­count, in part, for the low de­tec­tion rates. Din­di­al, who has 26 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, re­tired in 2020. He ad­mit­ted that in­suf­fi­cient ves­sels placed the Coast Guard at a dis­ad­van­tage.

“If you’re en­ter­ing a race and every­body else has prop­er shoes and you’re wear­ing bed­room slip­pers, you’re start­ing the race at a dis­ad­van­tage. We as law en­force­ment need to keep abreast and ahead of the crim­i­nals, so they need prop­er in­ter­cep­tors; they need in­ter­cep­tors with the radar sys­tems, in­ter­cep­tors that can stay out longer and have night vi­sion,” he said.

Un­der the 1979 In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Mar­itime Search and Res­cue, T&T has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of 68,500 square nau­ti­cal miles. Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Coast Guard’s pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, Lt Khadi­ja Lamy, via email but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

Bil­lions Spent

Be­tween 2007 and 2023, the State has spent at least $3.7 bil­lion on 32 ves­sels for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard, ac­cord­ing to Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture, De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture, and Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme doc­u­ments.

At least an­oth­er $81.1 mil­lion was spent on main­tain­ing ves­sels, while $19.3 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed on ‘naval as­sets and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port for the ac­qui­si­tion of naval as­sets.’

De­spite the bil­lions be­ing spent over the last two decades on at­tempts to re­duce un­law­ful im­por­ta­tion, il­le­gal weapons have been flood­ing the streets for the past decade, pil­ing up mur­ders not just in Trinidad but al­so in To­ba­go. As of Thurs­day evening, 24 peo­ple were mur­dered on the sis­ter isle in 2024, while an­oth­er 466 were mur­dered in Trinidad.

In his 2007 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning jus­ti­fied his gov­ern­ment’s pur­chase of three Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels (OPVs) say­ing, “Our in­tel­li­gence tells us that large quan­ti­ties of il­le­gal drugs are be­ing im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go for trans­ship­ment as well as for the do­mes­tic mar­ket. It is al­so clear that the vast sums of mon­ey in­volved in the il­le­gal drug trade are help­ing to fi­nance the im­por­ta­tion of guns, which is con­tribut­ing to the cur­rent crime wave. In these cir­cum­stances, the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy in­cludes the ac­qui­si­tion of a so­phis­ti­cat­ed radar sys­tem and three off-shore pa­trol ves­sels to con­duct drug in­ter­dic­tion and an­ti-smug­gling op­er­a­tions.”

But 14 years lat­er, in No­vem­ber 2021–the bor­ders still porous–Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called on two new Naval Cape Class Pa­trol ves­sels to be used ef­fec­tive­ly to de­fend the coun­try.

“You would have seen the hor­ren­dous sto­ries about peo­ple who have been traf­ficked from South Amer­i­ca and even from our own ter­ri­to­ry. You are re­quired to dis­cour­age that. You would have seen the amount of firearms on our streets and the ef­fect that that is hav­ing on our safe­ty and our se­cu­ri­ty. Your first line of de­fence is the na­tion’s first line of de­fence. These are large craft, in­so­far as is­land na­tions are con­cerned, but you car­ry on board the small­er craft that can chase down and that can en­ter the coastal zone. Make use of these fa­cil­i­ties,” he said at Staubles Bay in Ch­aguara­mas.

Ves­sels Ac­quired Be­tween 2007 and 2023

* Three Off­shore Pa­trol Ve­hi­cles (OPVs) were pur­chased in 2007 for $1.5 bil­lion.

The Gov­ern­ment took out a $2.2 bil­lion loan from BNP Paribas and Lloyds for the fi­nanc­ing. “The de­liv­ery of three Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels, six fast pa­trol boats (armed with gen­er­al-pur­pose ma­chine guns and a 20mm can­non), four armed he­li­copters, and six in­ter­cep­tors by 2010 will fur­ther bol­ster the pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters from the il­le­gal drug trade. This will com­ple­ment the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the al­ready com­mis­sioned Coastal Radar Cen­tre,” Man­ning said in 2009.

The PP gov­ern­ment can­celled the con­tract in 2010, say­ing the ships ar­rived late and were un­suit­able for the re­quired func­tion. BAE, the ship con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, was or­dered to pay the T&T Gov­ern­ment $1.4 bil­lion in set­tle­ments. How­ev­er, the State lost around $1 bil­lion over­all on the deal, based on loan pay­ments, le­gal fees, as­so­ci­at­ed train­ing costs and in­fra­struc­ture work to ac­com­mo­date the ships.

* Two ves­sels were ac­quired for TTCG for $132 mil­lion.

“In the in­ter­im, and giv­en the ur­gency with which the Gov­ern­ment re­quires ad­di­tion­al mar­itime ca­pac­i­ty, we have ac­quired two Ves­sels which are now be­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly mod­i­fied to dis­charge the man­date of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard. The price of these two ves­sels is $132 mil­lion,” the late Man­ning said in his 2008 bud­get speech.

*12 new spe­cialised ves­sels: four coastal pa­trol ves­sels, two util­i­ty ves­sels and six on-board In­ter­cep­tor ves­sels were pro­cured for $1.4 bil­lion un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in 2015.

* A mul­ti-pur­pose ves­sel, which cost $228 mil­lion, ar­rived in Oc­to­ber 2015. TTS Nel­son II was bought through the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, but the ship was not added to the Coast Guard fleet un­til Au­gust 2017. Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley ac­cused the PP gov­ern­ment of im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices for the deal.

* Four high-speed in­board in­ter­cep­tors were pro­cured in 2018 for $15.4 mil­lion.

* Two Naval Cape Class Pa­trol Ves­sels were pur­chased by the PNM Gov­ern­ment in 2019 for more than $500 mil­lion; US$38.6 mil­lion each.

* Four high-speed out­board in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels were pro­cured for $11 mil­lion in 2021. Four naval as­sets were giv­en to the TTCG by the US Gov­ern­ment in 2023. They cost around $10 mil­lion to up­grade.

Main­te­nance of Ves­sels Be­tween 2008 and 2023

* Main­te­nance of six fast pa­trol crafts for $8.5 mil­lion in 2014

* Two coastal pa­trol ves­sels: Gas­par Grand and Cha­cachacare retro­fit­ted in 2015 for $25.5 mil­lion

* Main­te­nance of 12 Damen Naval As­sets for $15.4 mil­lion in 2017

* Main­te­nance of 12 Damen ves­sels for $1.4 mil­lion in 2018

* Main­te­nance of Daman Ves­sels for $1 mil­lion in 2019

* Lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port and main­te­nance of DAMEN ves­sels for $0.5 mil­lion in 2020

* Ac­qui­si­tion and main­te­nance of naval as­sets, as well as im­prove­ment and de­vel­op­ment of bases/util­i­ties for $17.5 mil­lion in 2021

* Main­te­nance of naval as­sets for $29.8 mil­lion in 2023

Oth­er TTCG Costs Be­tween 2007 and 2023

* Salaries – $4 Bil­lion

* Uni­forms: $34.5 mil­lion

* Tele­phones: $32.9 mil­lion

* Food – $226.6 mil­lion

* Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance – $149 mil­lion

* Fu­el/Lu­bri­cants – $80.3 mil­lion (2016 to 2022)

* Equip­ment Main­te­nance/Re­pair – $4 mil­lion Jan­i­to­r­i­al Ser­vices – $22.4 mil­lion