Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Cham­ber is call­ing for an end to the war of words be­tween the is­land’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Au­gus­tine and Dr Row­ley have had heat­ed ex­changes over the ap­point­ment of a new Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and pay­ment by monies owed to the Warn­er Con­struc­tions Lim­it­ed.

Cur­tis Williams, the head of the To­ba­go Cham­ber, said it is time to sit and talk.

“The THA must have some sort of di­a­logue with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment as we go for­ward. We can­not be fight­ing. I think we are tired; we are weary. We need to have di­a­logue. (Mr Au­gus­tine) get our team and sit with the Prime Min­is­ter and his team and let’s work out the chal­lenges we face in To­ba­go and I think that is the on­ly way we can get things go­ing. We on our own can’t do it here in To­ba­go,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Williams said the To­ba­go Cham­ber was “ex­cit­ed and ea­ger­ly await­ing the break­down of some of the ex­pla­na­tions” in the THA’s bud­get de­liv­ered on Mon­day.

He said the ma­jor­i­ty of the busi­ness­es un­der the um­brel­la of the Cham­ber pro­vide goods and ser­vices for the THA and many are im­pact­ed by late pay­ment by the is­land’s Gov­ern­ment.

“We have our mem­bers are strug­gling. We are mem­bers who have no mon­ey. We are mem­bers who cred­i­tors, no mon­ey. So, what we see is most of our mem­bers do busi­ness with the THA, which is about 99 per cent of or mem­bers. They haven’t been paid for the last four months.”

He is call­ing on the THA to pay up.

“We are ask­ing the var­i­ous Di­vi­sions Ed­u­ca­tion, Works, Health, Tourism, on what they can do for us. It has been four months to a year.”

Williams said some col­leagues are hav­ing a tough time re­main­ing op­er­a­tional.

“To­day (Wednes­day) I have a mem­ber called me and said le­gal ac­tion has start­ed on his busi­ness,” he said.

He ob­served that the is­land’s busi­ness­es are still re­cov­er­ing from the pan­dem­ic. He said that while there was an in­crease in tourists to the is­land, he is look­ing for­ward more pre­dictable econ­o­my ac­tiv­i­ty.

“In tourism sec­tor, we see there are some spikes of ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pen­ing on week­ends. So, you will have that spike com­ing up every so of­ten. But re­mem­ber spikes can’t pay loans, spike can’t pay the mort­gages”

Williams was elect­ed Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in April re­plac­ing Di­anne Hadad.