Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, ac­cus­ing him of fail­ing to act in the best in­ter­est of cit­i­zens via a pro­pos­al to in­tro­duce un­sub­sidised do­mes­tic air­fares.

Beck­les is­sued the call yes­ter­day, as she strong­ly crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s con­sid­er­a­tion of high­er peak-pe­ri­od tick­et prices on the air­bridge.

On Thurs­day, Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj an­nounced that a pro­pos­al is be­fore Gov­ern­ment, which could see mem­bers of the pub­lic pay­ing an un­sub­sidised fee of be­tween $960 and $1,000 to trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go via CAL dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les de­scribed the move as “op­pres­sive” and warned it would have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for or­di­nary cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who re­ly on the air­bridge for dai­ly trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She ar­gued that the pro­posed in­crease, from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400 to as much as $1,000, rep­re­sents a steep and sud­den jump that would dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect work­ing-class fam­i­lies and fre­quent trav­ellers.

“A sud­den fare in­crease of over 100 per cent can­not be con­sid­ered ‘noth­ing’ by any­one oth­er than a clear­ly dis­con­nect­ed Cab­i­net,” Beck­les said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader warned that high­er peak-pe­ri­od fares would re­duce pre­dictable ac­cess to flights, dis­rupt the move­ment of peo­ple and place ad­di­tion­al strain on To­ba­go’s econ­o­my. She said busi­ness­es on the is­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tors, would face in­creased op­er­at­ing costs, which are like­ly to be passed on to con­sumers.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, the rip­ple ef­fects could ex­tend be­yond tourism, im­pact­ing ac­cess to health­care and ed­u­ca­tion for cit­i­zens who de­pend on af­ford­able in­ter-is­land trav­el.

She fur­ther ar­gued that re­duced af­ford­abil­i­ty could dis­cour­age do­mes­tic trav­el, un­der­min­ing vis­i­tor flow in­to To­ba­go and af­fect­ing small busi­ness­es such as guest­hous­es, taxi op­er­a­tors, tour guides and food ven­dors.

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing what she de­scribed as a “lazy strat­e­gy” by opt­ing for fare in­creas­es in­stead of ad­dress­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies with­in CAL and im­prov­ing re­li­a­bil­i­ty on the air­bridge.

She main­tained that sub­sidised in­ter-is­land trav­el is a long­stand­ing na­tion­al prin­ci­ple meant to pre­serve uni­ty and en­sure equal ac­cess with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Once sub­sidised con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween the is­lands is treat­ed as ex­pend­able, noth­ing is pro­tect­ed,” she warned, sug­gest­ing that car­go and seabridge fares could al­so come un­der threat.

Beck­les urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er the pro­pos­al and pur­sue so­lu­tions that would not shift the fi­nan­cial bur­den on­to the trav­el­ling pub­lic.

Beck­les was sup­port­ed by PNM Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man, who said up­on read­ing Guardian Me­dia’s sto­ry, her thoughts im­me­di­ate­ly went to her fel­low To­bag­o­ni­ans. She is wor­ried that this pro­pos­al is Gov­ern­ment’s pre­cur­sor to re­mov­ing the sub­sidy en­tire­ly.

“I think it is ac­tu­al­ly a soft launch, so we’re prob­a­bly go­ing to see a grad­ual re­moval of the sub­sidy al­to­geth­er, maybe over the next cou­ple of years. We have seen where the Gov­ern­ment keeps test­ing the wa­ters where sub­si­dies are con­cerned, where tax­es are con­cerned, so I be­lieve it is ac­tu­al­ly a soft launch see how the pub­lic re­acts, see what it does in terms of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, or at least be­ing able to re­duce spend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment side and then once it works, we prob­a­bly see a grad­ual re­moval.”

She said she al­so has no ex­pec­ta­tion that Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will de­fend the peo­ple of To­ba­go, giv­en his close work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

Mean­while, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ques­tioned why there was no up­roar over Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al.

On Face­book yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley post­ed, “Could you imag­ine if I had done that?”

He added, “Then you would have heard all about the de­struc­tion of the lo­cal econ­o­my and how much I didn’t like To­ba­go. Now? Si­lence and meek ac­cep­tance.”

Dr Row­ley con­clud­ed with, “Ap­par­ent­ly, the air link is no longer a vi­tal right of en­ti­tle­ment equiv­a­lent to the high­way to Point Fortin.”