Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce Di­anne Hadad is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­lax the stip­u­la­tions for trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Hadad said the To­ba­go bub­ble does not make any sense and the air­bridge and seabridge need to be more ac­tive in or­der to boost do­mes­tic tourism.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew ear­li­er this week, Hadad said To­ba­go’s econ­o­my and tourism sec­tor are be­ing af­fect­ed and called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­lax the COVID mea­sures for in­ter-is­land trav­el

“Even Trinidad can­not come to To­ba­go as we speak, so is it that we have plans for the open­ing of the bor­ders so that the wall be­tween us can be bro­ken down and that we can en­joy at least some part of the move­ment of peo­ple which cre­ates the con­sump­tion which is what tourism is all about,” she said.

Hadad said due to the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, re­duced flights and sail­ings, To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try is non-ex­is­tent at this time

“We have one flight in the morn­ing thir­ty-four per­sons, one in the af­ter­noon thir­ty-four per­sons, with a long list of who is en­ti­tled to get on board the plane first. So clear­ly, there is no room for tourism there and the boats are op­er­at­ing not at full ca­pac­i­ty and be­cause of the fear fac­tor pro­mot­ed around COVID and we came to a se­ri­ous lock­down in Ju­ly and ear­ly Au­gust, it just end­ed when we were just start­ing to en­joy a lit­tle bit of life and eco­nom­ics,” she said

Com­par­ing the do­mes­tic flight arrange­ments to the repa­tri­a­tion flights leav­ing T&T dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Hadad called on the Gov­ern­ment to cease the fear-mon­ger­ing and re­open the lo­cal bor­ders

“The flights from Trinidad to To­ba­go and back are op­er­at­ing at half ca­pac­i­ty and you have to sit in a cer­tain arrange­ment. How­ev­er, Caribbean Air­lines, Trinidad or Port-of-Spain to New York, left with full ca­pac­i­ty and every­body sit­ting next to each oth­er and then my un­der­stand­ing be­yond that, the flights that went to Lon­don and so with BA, they all were full ca­pac­i­ty with every­body sit­ting next to each oth­er, so I think we need to get back to re­al­i­ty,” she said.

Com­ment­ing on To­ba­go’s Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $2.134 bil­lion, Hadad said she was not sur­prised by the amount giv­en to the is­land.