Leroy George

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act of 1996 has a list of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that be­long to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). The act al­so has a list of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that do not be­long to the THA.

The two afore­men­tioned lists are known as the fifth sched­ule and the sixth sched­ule, re­spec­tive­ly. One item on the 5th Sched­ule (THA Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties) is To­ba­go’s “Land and Ma­rine Parks”, the lat­ter of which does not yet ap­pear to ex­ist, oth­er than as a po­ten­tial­ly fu­tur­is­tic con­cept. One item in the 6th Sched­ule (Not THA Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties) is “Le­gal Af­fairs”.

The Ma­rine Ar­eas Preser­va­tion and En­hance­ment Act of 1970 was last amend­ed in 1996, which is the year of the THA Act. This act fo­cus­es heav­i­ly on the preser­va­tion of a spe­cif­ic ma­rine area, in­clud­ing and sur­round­ing the Buc­coo Reef. The act puts this area un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. This area is not re­ferred to as a ma­rine park.

The To­ba­go Ma­rine Parks Bill of 2020 seeks to usurp au­thor­i­ty from the Ma­rine Ar­eas Preser­va­tion and En­hance­ment Act, as it per­tains to most of the ar­eas that the act present­ly pro­tects. Like all oth­er bills, this THA Bill has the am­bi­tion of evolv­ing in­to an act. If this bill were to pass both the Low­er and Up­per hous­es of Par­lia­ment and then be signed in­to en­force­able law by the Pres­i­dent, it could po­ten­tial­ly be the first time in his­to­ry that a THA Bill ac­tu­al­ly be­came law; as such, it would serve as an in­di­ca­tion of what a THA em­pow­ered with leg­isla­tive au­ton­o­my would look like.

Would a THA that has le­gal af­fairs au­thor­i­ty be used as a tool for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of so­cio-eco­nom­ic growth for To­ba­go’s na­tives, or would it be used to cre­ate harm­ful un­due in­flu­ence in To­ba­go’s pri­vate sec­tor on an is­land where over 60 per cent of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion is al­ready em­ployed by the State, and the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) is of­ten re­port­ed by the Fi­nance Sec­re­tary as ac­tu­al­ly be­ing less than the THA’s Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment year­ly bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion?

In the “Pre­lim­i­nary” part of the bill, “Au­thor­i­ty” is de­fined as the ad­min­is­tra­tor in the THA Di­vi­sion with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ma­rine parks and in­cludes any of­fi­cer au­tho­rised by that ad­min­is­tra­tor to act on his/her be­half. It should be not­ed that the Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA has in­flu­ence in both the ap­proval of the ap­point­ment of a THA Ad­min­is­tra­tor and the ap­point­ment of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that fall un­der any and all THA di­vi­sions.

The present THA Chief Sec­re­tary on­ly re­cent­ly re­lieved his present Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of some of her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary. It should be not­ed that this is the sec­ond Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary un­der his com­mand in his four-year term, and he did threat­en sim­i­lar ac­tion against his first Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary be­fore that deputy hand­ed in his res­ig­na­tion from that po­si­tion. Even more re­cent­ly, with­out the ini­tial knowl­edge of the res­i­dents of To­ba­go, the present Chief Sec­re­tary gave a very large per­cent­age of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Sec­re­tary of Tourism to his Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary.

The au­thor­i­ty that this bill seeks to give to the di­vi­sion ad­min­is­tra­tor is ar­gued by many stake­hold­ers to be more ap­pro­pri­ate for the pres­i­dent of the Store Bay Reef Tour As­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents the vast ma­jor­i­ty of glass-bot­tom boat own­ers, con­sid­er­ing that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rect stake­hold­ers in this ma­rine area are the boat own­ers and their em­ploy­ees of this en­tire­ly pri­vate sec­tor in­dus­try. The po­si­tion of the afore­men­tioned or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pres­i­dent is de­ter­mined every two years via a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process of in­ter­nal elec­tions, un­like the ap­point­ed po­si­tions of THA Di­vi­sion Ad­min­is­tra­tors.

Michael Frank is the present vice pres­i­dent of the Store Bay Reef Tour As­so­ci­a­tion; he be­lieves that whilst it would be much bet­ter for his or­gan­i­sa­tion to have the au­thor­i­ty that this bill seeks to give to a THA ad­min­is­tra­tor, there is one di­vi­sion in the THA that would be best suit­ed to have a say in this area’s af­fairs (the Di­vi­sion of Tourism).

The To­ba­go Ma­rine Parks Bill seeks to re­strict peo­ple from en­ter­ing the pro­posed Ma­rine Park un­less they have per­mits is­sued by the “Au­thor­i­ty”, the ap­pli­ca­tion for which would come with a fee of an un­spec­i­fied fig­ure.

The bill seeks to ex­po­nen­tial­ly in­crease the amount of mon­ey that would be paid in fines for those who com­mit an of­fence against the pro­posed act, and even in­clude prison time.

The al­ready ex­ist­ing Ma­rine Preser­va­tion and En­hance­ment Act states, “Any per­son who con­tra­venes any such reg­u­la­tions is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of one thou­sand dol­lars and, in the case of a con­tin­u­ing of­fence, to a fur­ther fine of fifty dol­lars for each day on which the of­fence con­tin­ues.” The pro­posed Ma­rine Parks Bill not on­ly in­cludes fines of up to $20,000 but al­so in­tro­duces the idea of in­clud­ing prison terms rang­ing from one to two years.

In the To­ba­go Ma­rine Parks Bill, if the “Au­thor­i­ty” choos­es to with­hold per­mits for any rea­son, one can ap­ply to have their case heard by an “Ap­peals Com­mit­tee”. The bill pro­pos­es that all three mem­bers of the Ap­peals Com­mit­tee be ap­point­ed by the Chief Sec­re­tary or by the Chief Sec­re­tary’s ap­point­ed Sec­re­tary, or by the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor, whose ap­point­ment’s ap­proval is in­flu­enced by law by the Chief Sec­re­tary.