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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Year In Re­view

Seabridge plagued Tobago

San­dals faces scruti­ny and chal­lenges

by

2384 days ago
20181230

It was a tur­bu­lent year for To­ba­go as the seabridge fail­ures over­shad­owed all oth­ers is­sues.

Oth­er events grab­bing at­ten­tion in­clud­ed the San­dal’s Re­sort project, the sim­i­lar­i­ty of slo­gans used by both To­ba­go and An­guil­la to lure vis­i­tors as well as the mat­ter of air­lift to bring more tourists to To­ba­go.

The sea bridge fi­as­co

From ear­ly Jan­u­ary, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T’s (PATT) strug­gled with main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent sched­ule of ser­vice on the sea bridge.

For the first three months of the year, PATT is­sued more than 30 news re­leas­es de­tail­ing sail­ing can­cel­la­tions due to elec­tri­cal and me­chan­i­cal mal­func­tions of ves­sels and al­leged sab­o­tage on the MV Cabo Star, the lone car­go ves­sel ser­vic­ing the route.

In Feb­ru­ary, the PATT board pulled the T&T Ex­press—the lone fast fer­ry op­er­at­ing on the sea bridge— from the route “in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty.” The PATT said the ac­tion was nec­es­sary as the ves­sel’s two and a half hour jour­ney was now stretch­ing to over four hours and it was “over­due for its statu­to­ry main­te­nance pro­gramme.”

The T&T Spir­it, which had been dry­docked since June 2017, was off the route as it “still had some out­stand­ing works to ad­dress,” PATT said.

On­ly the MV Cabo Star re­mained on the route, the Au­thor­i­ty not­ed.

CAL’s res­cue

PATT took ac­tion to get pas­sen­gers to To­ba­go. It made arrange­ments with Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to car­ry con­firmed fast fer­ry pas­sen­gers be­tween the is­lands.

Pas­sen­gers were shut­tled to the air­port by Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tions (PTSC) bus­es and giv­en a plane ride for the price of their boat fare cour­tesy the gov­ern­ment.

One of the wa­ter taxis which op­er­ates on the San Fer­nan­do to Port of Spain route was pressed in­to ser­vice be­tween March 27 and April 3. How­ev­er, en route to Trinidad, smoke was seen com­ing from the ves­sel’s en­gine room. Pas­sen­gers had to be tak­en from the ves­sel by the MV Cabo Star. Video of the res­cue was wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia.

In April, the T&T Spir­it re­turned to the route. By then, fer­ry pas­sen­ger con­fi­dence was at an all-time low, an in­dus­try in­sid­er not­ed.

In March, when the sea bridge shut down, the then new­ly-ap­point­ed chair­man of the To­ba­go Chap­ter of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Claude Benoit said: “There is no cred­i­bil­i­ty, peo­ple are not even think­ing of com­ing to To­ba­go be­cause they don’t know how they will get back and vice ver­sa.”

If the im­por­tance of the sea bridge to the is­land’s tourism sec­tor was ever ques­tioned, the ef­fects of its ab­sence were now seen in re­al time.

Pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Is­land Trans­port Com­mit­tee of the To­ba­go Cham­ber, Di­ane Hadad ex­plained the is­land’s plight to the world and said: “There is a loss in busi­ness... I’m not sure how long we can hold out for ... we will take some time to re­cov­er.”

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) Chris James said: “The in­dus­try’s busi­ness mod­el had to adapt. We re­lied more on the do­mes­tic mar­ket for sur­vival.”

By March there were re­ports that ma­jor busi­ness­es in the is­land’s tourism sec­tor were bank­rupt, while oth­ers faced fore­clo­sure.

Some ho­tel work­ers lost their jobs and oth­ers had to set­tle for a re­duced work-week as do­mes­tic tourists’ ar­rivals de­creased.

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvin Charles apol­o­gised for the sea bridge’s woes. In April, when the T&T Spir­it re­turned to the ser­vice, he hailed it a “wave of re­lief” and saw it as “a light at the end of the tun­nel.”

In Ju­ly, the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed pas­sen­ger fer­ry, the Galleons Pas­sage, ar­rived in Trinidad. How­ev­er, it was not put in­to ser­vice un­til Oc­to­ber as it had to un­der­go some retro­fitting.

On its maid­en voy­age, Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan took to Twit­ter to thank “cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly To­bag­o­ni­ans for their pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing.” He said he was “con­fi­dent that the chal­lenges on the sea bridge are now over.”

How­ev­er, the sea bridge woes con­tin­ued.

n Con­tin­ues on Page A11

The Galleons Pas­sage had to un­der­go re­pairs at sea two weeks af­ter it be­gan op­er­at­ing on the route. Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny’s (Nid­co) of­fi­cials said the en­gi­neers had seen “light on the bridge” and the four-and-a-half hour jour­ney was ex­pect­ed to take six hours.

In Oc­to­ber, the ves­sel, en route to To­ba­go had to re­turn to Trinidad. A Nid­co re­lease said in­clement weath­er caused chal­lenges on the jour­ney. How­ev­er, a pas­sen­ger’s video, which went vi­ral, showed what ap­peared to be a calm sea and sun­shine.

The T& T Ex­press was still off the route, and the T&T Spir­it was pulled from ser­vice in No­vem­ber for a brief time, as one of its three work­ing en­gines, need­ed re­pairs.

San­dals in the spot­light

Al­though the San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al (SRI) project is still in the ne­go­ti­a­tions stage, it was a hot­ly de­bat­ed top­ic this year.

The 900 -room project, which com­pris­es of two re­sorts—one for cou­ples and the oth­er for fam­i­lies—is a cam­paign promise of the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said once com­plet­ed the project is ex­pect­ed to bring in US$80 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to the Gov­ern­ment’s cof­fers and be of “sig­nif­i­cant val­ue to the tourism in­dus­try.”

Ka­mau Ak­ili, en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tant for Gold­en Grove Buc­coo Lim­it­ed (GG­BL), the state en­ter­prise spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to over­see the project, sum­ming up the sit­u­a­tion at a pub­lic meet­ing head­lined by val­u­a­tor Afra Ray­mond at the Scar­bor­ough Pub­lic Li­brary ear­li­er this month, said: “Nev­er has there been so much in­ter­est in a project and nev­er has there been so much talk about a project at this stage . . . al­though none of the de­tails is se­cret.”

Ac­cord­ing to GG­BL’s project’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC), the two re­sorts are to be lo­cat­ed on the Gold­en Grove and Buc­coo Es­tates. Both are man­groves ar­eas and the Buc­coo Es­tate is one of three ar­eas, in this coun­try pro­tect­ed un­der the Ram­sar Con­ven­tion and des­ig­nat­ed as Wet­lands of In­ter­na­tion­al Im­por­tance.

How­ev­er, Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and the En­vi­ron­ment Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes point­ed out that the Ram­sar agree­ment pro­vides guide­lines for de­vel­op­ment and warned To­bag­o­ni­ans not to lis­ten to “alarmists.”

The project has al­ready faced le­gal ac­tion.

Afra Ray­mond, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, took the gov­ern­ment to court to get de­tails on the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the ho­tel con­glom­er­ate and the Gov­ern­ment. A day be­fore the case was to be heard the gov­ern­ment re­leased the MOU.

Now that the de­tails are pub­lic, the project faces more scruti­ny as ques­tions on its ac­tu­al lo­ca­tion, the num­ber of jobs for lo­cals and ben­e­fits to the econ­o­my are be­ing raised.

An­oth­er tourism fi­as­co

The very re­cent is­sue of the per­ceived sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween To­ba­go’s des­ti­na­tion brand, Be­yond Or­di­nary and An­guil­la’s tourism cam­paign, Be­yond Ex­tra­or­di­nary, is be­ing de­bat­ed by many in­clud­ing politi­cians.

TTA CEO Louis Lewis said: “There are many sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween To­ba­go and all the oth­er is­lands in the Caribbean, so . . . you can find syn­er­gy be­tween taglines cho­sen by oth­er des­ti­na­tions.”

The An­guil­lans have put the is­sue to rest, but To­ba­go’s Op­po­si­tion par­ty, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, still has ques­tions. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Par­latu­vi­er/L’Anse Four­mi/ Spey­side Far­ley Au­gus­tine wants to know how much the brand­ing ex­er­cise cost and if To­ba­go will be re­fund­ed a por­tion of the mon­ey.

There were some shin­ing lights in the tourism in­dus­try, how­ev­er. Among them was the TTA’s suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tion with Sun­wing Tours to be­gin op­er­a­tions in To­ba­go.

Sun­wing Air­lines Inc. made its in­au­gur­al trip to To­ba­go on De­cem­ber 20.


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