Camille McEach­nie

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) An­cil Den­nis says Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va North Ra­mona Ram­di­al’s re­marks that “ghost ho­tels” are list­ed to ac­cess Gov­ern­ment’s $50 mil­lion COVID-19 re­lief fund­ing, is un­found­ed.

Ram­di­al, in a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day, called on Den­nis to ex­plain how “un­reg­is­tered and un­known” ho­tels were part of the THA list to re­ceive the grant.

Say­ing she based her ques­tion on a To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TH­TA) state­ment that 270 of the 449 ho­tels did not qual­i­fy, Ram­di­al called on Den­nis to be trans­par­ent about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of funds.

She al­so said the THA should agree to the TH­TA’s counter-pro­pos­al for the grant.

She warned that a fail­ure to im­ple­ment the rec­om­mend­ed pro­pos­al amount­ed to “a strat­e­gy for elec­tion cam­paign­ing by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) led the THA to un­der­serv­ing, un­reg­is­tered ho­tels.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue, Den­nis point­ed to the THA’s To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed’s (TTAL) 2019 Tourism Prod­uct Au­dit on the is­land’s ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor.

“TTAL used the au­dit to in­form the pol­i­cy for the grant dis­tri­b­u­tion,” Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia.

He al­so said on­ly “tax-pay­ing, reg­is­tered prop­er­ties qual­i­fied to ac­cess the grant.”

On the is­sue of ac­cept­ing the TH­TA’s pro­pos­al, Den­nis said:” We have to spend tax­pay­ers mon­ey re­spon­si­bly in this gua­va sea­son...I will meet with them (TH­TA). I am open to their pro­pos­al but it must be rea­son­able, giv­en the cur­rent cir­cum­stances.”

A sum­ma­ry of the au­dit, on TTAL’s web­site, said To­ba­go 580 own­ers pro­vid­ed 3,700 rooms.

It said the prop­er­ties ranged from self-cater­ing es­tab­lish­ments to large ho­tels and vil­las.