Loyse Vin­cent

The on­go­ing con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the pro­posed spend by the Gov­ern­ment of $50 mil­lion to up­grade ho­tels and guest­hous­es in To­ba­go in or­der to im­prove the is­land’s tourism prod­uct is the lat­est in what has been a his­to­ry of tax­pay­ers los­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in tourism spend un­der the con­trol of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

The lat­est con­fu­sion sur­rounds al­le­ga­tions that the sys­tem be­ing used to al­lo­cate fund­ing to prop­er­ties on the is­land is flawed, in that there are a num­ber of “ghost prop­er­ties on the list” and there is al­so an un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion that favours the small­er guest hous­es as op­posed to the larg­er prop­er­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the orig­i­nal plan, the small­er ho­tels and guest hous­es are ex­pect­ed to get the li­on’s share of $46 mil­lion, while any ho­tel with over 50 rooms will have to split the re­main­ing $4 mil­lion.

This is not the first time that tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has been used to up­grade prop­er­ties in To­ba­go.

Un­der the Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Pro­gramme (TAUP) there were re­im­bursable grants for ap­proved up­grade work done to ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties in To­ba­go. Many of those prop­er­ties had work that re­mained in­com­plete, over bud­get and in some cas­es the ho­tels even went in­to bank­rupt­cy.

But the his­to­ry of tax­pay­er’ mon­ey be­ing used by the Tourism Di­vi­sion of the THA and it not lead­ing to an im­proved sec­tor it lit­tered with ex­am­ple of wastage.

In 2015, for in­stance, the THA spent a to­tal of $32 mil­lion to pur­chase two prop­er­ties, Sanc­tu­ary Vil­la at Black Rock and Man­ta Lodge, a Dive Vil­la at Spey­side. Since then, in spite of talk of in­vestors show­ing in­ter­est, noth­ing has been done with ei­ther prop­er­ties. In fact the prop­er­ties are both in­com­plete and are the homes of bats and ro­dents as they have been sit­ting idly for more than five years.

The THA and then Sec­re­tary of Tourism in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine were in­ti­mate­ly in­volved in the pur­chase of the ho­tels and they re­main white ele­phants, with tax­pay­ers mon­ey ap­pear­ing to have gone down the drain.

David­son-Celis­tine is now the Sec­re­tary of Health in the THA and the po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM.

The 11-year-old To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence was de­signed to at­tract vis­i­tors to the is­land. In 2019 alone the fes­ti­val in­curred a bud­get of $12 mil­lion and while for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles com­mis­sioned econ­o­mist Dr Ralph Hen­ry, chair­man of Kairi Con­sul­tants, to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive eco­nom­ic im­pact as­sess­ment of the fes­ti­val for the past 10 years, the re­sults of those find­ings were nev­er made pub­lic.

An­oth­er thorn in the side of the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence is the fail­ure of THA of­fi­cials to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on a re­port­ed court mat­ter against in­ter­na­tion­al record­ing artist D’An­ge­lo (Michael Eu­gene Archer) who was al­leged­ly paid US $430,000 to per­form at the 2017 To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence but failed to make an ap­pear­ance.

In Sep­tem­ber 2016 then Sec­re­tary of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion David­son-Ce­les­tine launched two of a pro­posed six her­itage trails. Sig­nif­i­cant sums were spent to up­grade sev­er­al sites some of which are still in­com­plete.

The Scar­bor­ough Trail was air-marked to start from the Es­planade and end at Fort King George. The church trail was de­signed to be­gin at the Mt Pleas­ant An­gli­can Church and ceme­tery and end at Mo­ri­ah Mora­vian Church. These re­main in­com­plete and not an op­tion for lo­cals and vis­i­tors.

Al­so in 2015 a zip-line project for the Main Ridge For­est Re­serve was an­nounced. Af­ter spend­ing $500,000 to get the project off the ground the project was put on hold.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4 mil­lion was ap­proved to un­der­take this project, which was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in sev­en weeks of the ma­te­ri­als ar­riv­ing on site. A ser­vice agree­ment was signed in June 2015 be­tween the THA and Orig­i­nal Canopy Tours En­ter­prise Ltd to de­sign, de­vel­op and con­struct a high an­gle canopy tour course in the Main Ridge For­est Re­serve.

The di­vi­sion paid $416,000 to Orig­i­nal Canopy Tours En­ter­pris­es Ltd for ma­te­ri­als, equip­ment and a 40-foot in­su­lat­ed ship­ping con­tain­er, and $192,571 pay­ment for pro­cure­ment project man­age­ment done by EI­D­COT (Eco In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go) and vis­its to To­ba­go by Orig­i­nal Canopy Tours En­ter­pris­es Ltd.

Al­so un­der David­son- Ce­les­tine’s lead­er­ship as Tourism Sec­re­tary, in 2012 there were plans to con­struct a con­ser­va­tion build­ing to house ar­ti­facts that were go­ing to “be plucked from the seabed of the Scar­bor­ough port”. This project was to be lead by Dr Kroum Batcharov of the Mar­itime Arche­ol­o­gy Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, who was hired to work along­side the Rock­ley Bay Re­search Project to in­ves­ti­gate and har­vest 17th cen­tu­ry ar­ti­facts from ship­wrecks on the Scar­bor­ough har­bour again this is a project that has not been com­plet­ed and mon­ey spent by the THA to no avail.

While the dis­burse­ment of the gov­ern­ment’s $50 mil­lion dol­lar up­grade grant con­tin­ues to be a prover­bial “bone of con­tention” among prop­er­ty own­ers in To­ba­go, many are call­ing on To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cials to say how they in­tend to uti­lize the funds pre­vi­ous­ly al­lo­cat­ed for sev­er­al can­celled events such as the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and the To­ba­go Goat and Crab Race Fes­ti­val at Buc­coo.

They al­so won­der if this is go­ing to be an­oth­er case of mon­ey be­ing thrown away and failed projects.