The Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD) has launched an investigation into why the MV Kanawan was out of fuel on Monday and unable to leave the Supenaam Stelling as scheduled.
According to a source at the T&HD, the vessel would’ve been issued fuel on May 9 and this was not expected to have been used up by Monday, May 15th.
“So, before any (more) fuel was issued, a team of officers, including the Chief Mechanical Engineer went up to check on the vessel and all the tanks to ensure that the information that was communicated [was] accurate and an investigation into what would’ve went wrong to cause the issues would been launched,” the source explained to Stabroek News, while pointing out that after the initial investigation did not find anything wrong with the vessel itself or the tanks where the fuel is stored, approval would have been given to have fuel sent to refuel the vessel.
The source explained that the T&HD was notified of the issue on Sunday midday.
It was reported that on Monday many persons were displaced and inconvenienced because of the delay in departure caused by the lack of fuel. However, the source explained that there was not any backup in traffic since the T&HD sent the MV Sabanto, MV Malali and MV Makouria to assist.
“Those three vessels were actually able to clear up the traffic and even one came back with space so in terms of persons being inconvenienced, I wouldn’t say it would’ve had a heavy negative impact on them because we would’ve sent the additional vessels to complement the one that was out of service,” the source explained, while pointing out that there were only a few trucks waiting to be loaded in the compound when they had visited.
Even though the T&HD would have received an explanation, the source explained that an additional investigation is currently ongoing since there were no issues with the vessel itself.
