Forty-sev­en To­bag­o­ni­ans re­ceived To­ba­go Awards for their con­tri­bu­tion to the is­land at the Au­di­to­ri­um, Shaw Park Com­plex, Scar­bor­ough.

The an­nu­al event recog­nis­es To­bag­o­ni­ans for their self­less ser­vice to the is­land, sim­i­lar to the Na­tion­al Awards, and ho­n­ours in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions in four cat­e­gories - the To­ba­go Medal of Ho­n­our Gold, Sil­ver, Bronze and the Chief Sec­re­tary’s Award.

Speak­ing at the event, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said, “We here­in as­sert that we do not need Trinidad to recog­nise our he­roes in or­der for us to ap­plaud and award our own he­roes. This is an act of self-love. This is an act of big­ness and not just big­gish­ness. This is a pur­pose­ful act in en­sur­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go sto­ry is not just the usu­al Tri­ni sto­ry, but one where To­ba­go’s achieve­ments are record­ed as part of the na­tion­al sto­ry.”

He said that ul­ti­mate­ly, this is about the re­al To­ba­go sto­ry be­ing told and the “he­roes of our sto­ry be­ing ho­n­oured.”

Au­gus­tine said these are the sto­ries of courage and not the usu­al “cass-cass” cow­ard­ly spewed by fake so­cial me­dia pro­files.

“These are the sto­ries of re­al hon­est busi­ness­men and women and not of smart men try­ing to hus­tle and jos­tle so­ci­ety for 30 pieces of sil­ver, or is it that the go­ing rate is 100 pieces of sil­ver? This is about en­sur­ing that the good in our so­ci­ety is nei­ther silent nor si­lenced,” he said.

He added, “There are the hum­ble vil­lage he­roes: the fish­er­folk that is full of zeal (some­times mis­guid­ed zeal, but well-mean­ing zeal), the farm­ers who have fed gen­er­a­tions, po­lice­men and fire­men that rose through the ranks and took charge of our safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, the teach­ers who spent their en­tire lives chang­ing lives to the point where their names be­came syn­ony­mous with the schools they taught at, the com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­is­ers that are of­ten for­got­ten, and the small busi­ness­man that has been ply­ing his trade on the same cor­ner for decades and faith­ful­ly us­ing his in­come to spon­sor every school treats, books, foot­ball teams and crick­et com­pe­ti­tions in the vil­lage among oth­ers.

“This is per­haps the broad­est cross-sec­tion of awardees in the his­to­ry of these awards. But to­day is not sole­ly about in­di­vid­u­als, but al­so or­gan­i­sa­tions mak­ing a marked dif­fer­ence, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volved in gen­uine en­vi­ron­men­tal work.”

Six in­di­vid­u­als and two NGOs re­ceived the To­ba­go medal of Ho­n­our Gold on the night.

The in­di­vid­u­als were An­nette Al­fred (Cul­ture), Dr Jef­fer­son David­son (Pub­lic Ser­vice), Olive James (Agri­cul­ture), Nathaniel Moore (Ed­u­ca­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice); and Arc­turus Browne (Ed­u­ca­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice) and Rawle “Axe­back” Ti­tus (Cul­ture), who award­ed posthu­mous­ly.

The Cas­tara Tourism De­vel­op­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (Tourism and En­vi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville (En­vi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion) were the NGOs award­ed.