Camille McEach­nie

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Chap­ter of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Di­ane Hadad is mak­ing a pub­lic ap­peal for stake­hold­ers in do­mes­tic air and sea trav­el to have a struc­tured and or­ga­nized post-COVID-19 re­cov­ery plan, to meet the busi­ness sec­tor’s needs.

She told Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day do­mes­tic trav­el should in­crease. She says al­though the gov­ern­ment is open­ing the econ­o­my in phas­es, do­mes­tic trav­el is not in­creas­ing pro­por­tion­ate­ly and negat­ing the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts.

“I will re­al­ly like, on be­half of the cham­ber, to see Gov­ern­ment re­open both the port and do­mes­tic trav­el in a much bet­ter way.”

She said the gov­ern­ment’s stim­u­lus pack­age, which gives $100 mil­lion to cred­it unions and $100 to First Cit­i­zen Bank for small busi­ness­es, could not be prop­er­ly used as peo­ple could not get to and from the is­lands.

She said Caribbean Air­lines sched­uled four flights per day, one each on morn­ings and evenings.

Hadad said just over 100 pas­sen­gers trav­el dai­ly as the air­line is still car­ry­ing on­ly 50 per cent of its flight load.

She said the cham­ber feels more flights, with an in­creased ca­pac­i­ty, will im­prove the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion.

“If you are bring­ing out the staff to do one flight, they can do at least three ro­ta­tions on a morn­ing and three on an af­ter­noon and more peo­ple can sit on the plane,” Hadad said.

She said the sea bridge has sim­i­lar prob­lems not­ing that pas­sen­gers could not get tick­ets to trav­el as the ves­sels con­tin­ue to run at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

She al­leges pas­sen­gers were giv­en pref­er­ence based on whether they are part of the es­sen­tial ser­vices.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to port of­fi­cials on this is­sue.

Vil­ma Lewis-Cock­burn, Man­ag­er, Mar­ket­ing, and Pub­lic Re­la­tions of the T&T In­ter-is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny, said the port has no pol­i­cy giv­ing pref­er­ence to per­sons in the es­sen­tial ser­vice.

On the is­sue of the sea bridge ca­pac­i­ty, Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the sea bridge is cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing at “ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty.”

“Once the de­mand in­creas­es, they will make the ad­just­ments on the sea bridge,” the min­is­ter added.