The T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) is on stand­by should they be called for help by the Venezue­lan Coast Guard as the search con­tin­ues for 19 refugees, who have been feared drowned af­ter the pirogue they were in sunk last Thurs­day. The lone sur­vivor of the in­ci­dent, Al­ber­to Abreu, 25, of Mar­gari­ta, who was res­cued by a US busi­ness­man Robert Richards, Vir­gin Is­lands, is cur­rent­ly in Grena­da.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the TTCG’s Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer, Lieu­tenant Ker­ron Valere, on May 17 at 1443 hours (2:43 pm), the TTCG re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from North Post Ra­dio that a civil­ian ves­sel re­trieved an in­di­vid­ual who was in the wa­ter in a po­si­tion ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 miles north of Cha­cachacare, with­in T&T’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters. The for­eign na­tion­al, it added, in­di­cat­ed that he was on board a ves­sel with 19 oth­ers which de­part­ed Mar­gari­ta Is­land, Venezuela en route to Trinidad on the pre­vi­ous day.

“Up­on re­ceiv­ing this in­for­ma­tion, the TTCG im­me­di­ate­ly de­ployed its mar­itime as­sets to aid in the Search and Res­cue Op­er­a­tion. The TTCG has been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts in the at­tempt to dis­cov­er ad­di­tion­al per­sons with fur­ther search­es be­ing con­duct­ed with­in the wa­ters of Trinidad and To­ba­go since the ini­tial dis­cov­ery,” Valere said.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]