Sean Nero

Chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don has ac­cused the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment of pho­to­copy­ing plans sub­mit­ted by his ex­ec­u­tive to cen­tral gov­ern­ment for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go, and re­pro­duc­ing them as orig­i­nals.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on June 1, said as part of her gov­ern­ment's vi­sion for growth of To­ba­go's tourism-based econ­o­my, the is­land should be made a du­ty-free zone for for­eign­ers. Fur­ther, plans for first-class mari­nas were in the works. She made the re­marks at the for­mal open­ing of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach Re­sort, at To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions, To­ba­go.

But in an in­ter­view Lon­don said, "Def­i­nite­ly! The ques­tion about To­ba­go as a free trade zone is some­thing that the sec­re­tary for fi­nance (Anselm Lon­don) has writ­ten to the present Min­is­ter of Fi­nance about on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, over the past two years. In fact, we have be­come very frus­trat­ed that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has not tak­en the time to even re­spond to us in a se­ri­ous kind of way."

At the week­ly post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 31, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz an­nounced that Cab­i­net ap­proved a To­ba­go Tourism De­vel­op­ment Fund, val­ued at $250 mil­lion. Less than 24 hours lat­er, the Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained that the fund would take a two-pronged ap­proach fo­cus­ing on debt re­struc­tur­ing for tourism-re­lat­ed busi­ness­es, cit­ing that many "hote­liers were fac­ing fore­clo­sure."

She said the fund would al­so fa­cil­i­tate the up­grade and main­te­nance of ex­ist­ing prop­er­ties. She said it was the Gov­ern­ment's plan to part­ner with the THA and the peo­ple of To­ba­go to build ca­pac­i­ty for tourism on the is­land. Mak­ing To­ba­go an eco­nom­ic zone would make the is­land at­trac­tive for du­ty-free shop­ping, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, there­by in­creas­ing vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

But Lon­don, seem­ing­ly in dis­be­lief by what he heard, said, "We were a lit­tle sur­prised that the Prime Min­is­ter would men­tion it as a new ini­tia­tive, but we are still hope­ful, be­cause it means they are go­ing to take it se­ri­ous­ly. All she said is that she is com­mit­ted to it, it doesn't mean that it's go­ing to hap­pen."

On the is­sue of the es­tab­lish­ment of mari­nas, he said stud­ies were com­mis­sioned and the THA had al­ready iden­ti­fied the var­i­ous sites in or­der of pri­or­i­ty. "I feel a lit­tle con­cerned that a num­ber of these ini­tia­tives that were put on the ta­ble by the THA are now be­ing re­cy­cled by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and are now be­ing foist­ed on the peo­ple of To­ba­go, as if they were new ini­tia­tives. I think if we stop politi­cis­ing de­vel­op­ment and re­al­ly deal with mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion we'll get a lot more done and a lot more quick­ly," he said.