JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Canadian traveller warns: Stay away from Tobago

by

20130314

A Cana­di­an busi­ness­man and trav­eller who fled To­ba­go last year has cre­at­ed a Web site warn­ing for­eign­ers to stay away from the is­land. In an ar­ti­cle in the Cana­di­an dai­ly news­pa­per, Metro, 61-year-old Phil Noo­nan claimed in March 2012 he was at­tacked by two To­bag­o­ni­ans while stay­ing at a guest house in Buc­coo, To­ba­go.

He said it oc­curred af­ter he in­ter­vened in a fight be­tween a young To­bag­on­ian man and the own­er of a restau­rant and bar which he of­ten vis­it­ed. Lat­er that day, Noo­nan told the pa­per, the young man and his broth­er ap­peared out­side his door shout­ing an­gri­ly and threat­en­ing to kill him. Three weeks af­ter the in­ci­dent, Noo­nan said, he fled the is­land in fear and frus­tra­tion.

Since then, he has cre­at­ed a Web site –tnt­warn­ing.com–which out­lines his many neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences on the is­land and warns tourists about the dan­gers there. Among is­sues he out­lined were vi­o­lent crime, poor cus­tomer ser­vice, high lev­els of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion and in­ef­fi­cien­cy and in­dif­fer­ence among the po­lice.

The Web site al­so dis­plays past trav­el ad­vi­sories from the US State De­part­ment and the British For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice, warn­ing of high lev­els of vi­o­lent crime in T&T.Yes­ter­day the T&T Guardian spoke to an of­fi­cial from the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), who said the di­vi­sion had nev­er re­ceived a re­port on the al­leged in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Noo­nan and was fol­low­ing it up.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said he was aware of some "wor­ry­ing in­ci­dents" that have tak­en place in To­ba­go in­volv­ing tourists and was work­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the THA to en­sure any at­tacks on tourists were ad­dressed se­ri­ous­ly.He de­scribed such in­ci­dents as "very un­for­tu­nate" but said they were rare.He added: "We want to en­sure that in­ci­dents like that are few and far be­tween, if at all. We al­so want to en­sure that if they do hap­pen, it is han­dled in a way so that the vic­tim does not feel left alone."

Ear­li­er this week the Huff­in­g­ton Post's Web site pub­lished a list of the ten least tourist-friend­ly na­tions in the world. T&T ranked eighth on the list, which in­clud­ed coun­tries such as Sier­ra Leone, Pak­istan and Haiti. The Post de­scribed T&T's pres­ence on the list as "slight­ly baf­fling, con­sid­er­ing the lo­cals are very friend­ly." It added in­fra­struc­ture in T&T need­ed im­prove­ment.Asked about his thoughts on that, Cadiz agreed that T&T's pres­ence on the list was sur­pris­ing since lo­cals were wel­com­ing and friend­ly.

He added: "One has to be very care­ful about these in­dices that are print­ed be­cause very of­ten they are more of a per­cep­tion than a re­al­i­ty."How­ev­er, he said, he would not dis­re­gard is­sues of neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of the is­land and his min­istry was em­bark­ing on a na­tion­al cam­paign to deal with the is­sue.In ad­di­tion, he said, he would soon sign a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion to es­tab­lish a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in­volv­ing tourism stake­hold­ers.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored