Yvonne Webb

Leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) Ash­worth Jack is deny­ing he sold out To­ba­go for $15 mil­lion.

Speak­ing on a joint uni­ty plat­form in Fyz­abad on Wednes­day night, Jack said be­cause of the fear of suc­cess of the coali­tion, al­le­ga­tions were be­ing made to dis­cred­it his par­ty. "What fool­ish­ness, who could sell To­ba­go for $15 mil­lion," he said, ex­plain­ing he looked in his bank ac­count be­fore com­ing to the meet­ing and that sum was not cred­it­ed to him. "I will lay down my life for you. I will nev­er sell To­ba­go to any­one," Jack said. He said he had in­struct­ed his at­tor­ney to take le­gal ac­tions against those who were spread­ing those ru­mours.

"I feel we must put an end to mat­ters like these," he said, adding that the job of one of the two TOP can­di­dates had been threat­ened. Jack al­so placed his sig­na­ture on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship agree­ment that would see five par­ties com­ing to­geth­er to con­test the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. Jack spoke about the hard­ship To­bag­o­ni­ans faced to ac­cess ser­vices. He said, an en­tire gen­er­a­tion of To­ba­go chil­dren were grow­ing up with­out a li­brary, which was de­stroyed by the 1997 earth­quake and nev­er re­built.

Jack said the con­tro­ver­sial Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, which was sched­uled to cost $150 mil­lion, but was now cost­ing $500 mil­lion, was yet to be com­plet­ed. He added: "If you have a bro­ken leg in To­ba­go, they have to spend $60,000 to fly you by he­li­copter to Trinidad." He said dirty linen from the To­ba­go hos­pi­tal al­so has to be trans­port­ed to Trinidad to be laun­dered. He said 90 per cent of the lands on that is­land has no clear ti­tle. "The PNM has done noth­ing to en­sure peo­ple can pass the land ti­tles to their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren," he said.