JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

PM, Tobago stakeholders meeting fruitful

by

2731 days ago
20180123

The meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and To­ba­go stake­hold­ers at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach Re­sort yes­ter­day has been de­scribed as fruit­ful.

A high-pow­ered min­is­te­r­i­al team led Row­ley, a THA team led by chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles and To­ba­go stake­hold­ers led by To­ba­go Cham­ber pres­i­dent De­mi John Cruick­shank, seemed com­fort­able fol­low­ing the four-hour, closed-door meet­ing.

The meet­ing, which was ini­ti­at­ed by Cruik­shank, was geared at find­ing so­lu­tions to the is­land’s strained tourism prod­uct af­ter it suf­fered a de­cline in 2017 due to the prob­lems of the air and sea bridges caus­ing To­ba­go’s econ­o­my to wors­en

Speak­ing at the press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Cruik­shank said he was pleased with the out­come.

“It was a very very fruit­ful meet­ing. I think we went in­to de­tail in terms of each item step- by- step and I think the pri­vate sec­tor is a lot clear­er in terms of what the Gov­ern­ment’s plans are for To­ba­go and I hope that in a very short space of time we can see the econ­o­my of To­ba­go on the path of growth and I hope that in the very near fu­ture we will see a re­solve of a num­ber of the is­sues that we as the pri­vate sec­tor has high­light­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter,” Cruik­shank said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the de­clin­ing tourism sec­tor, Row­ley said sev­er­al pro­pos­als were put for­ward by the Gov­ern­ment which have not yet kicked in. He said To­ba­go stake­hold­ers al­so of­fered sug­ges­tions

“Some of the pro­pos­als which they see as so­lu­tions may not be the pos­si­ble an­swer., They tell us that they were hard-hit and we be­lieve, by the un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the con­nec­tion to Trinidad, we are go­ing to fix that and the sea fer­ry which is large­ly for the move­ment from Trinidad to To­ba­go. We are now look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture hav­ing the ves­sels on the route, the Spir­it which has been on dry dock for quite some time is ex­pect­ed to do some sea tri­als next month and hope­ful­ly if the sea tri­als go well it will be back in­to ser­vice and that will plug the hole there.”

The PM added: “The Ex­press goes on dry dock and we do not ex­pect that dry dock­ing to be as ex­ten­sive as the Spir­it. We just com­mit­ted to buy­ing a third fer­ry and we will be own­ing those three ves­sels so we will be hav­ing three ves­sels avail­able, ded­i­cat­ed to the To­ba­go routes. In a mat­ter of months that should put an end to the pas­sen­ger fer­ry is­sue.”

On the is­sue of the air bridge, the Prime Min­is­ter said that there is room for im­prove­ment on all sides, but main­ly the util­i­sa­tion of the ser­vice by cit­i­zens. He said over 1 mil­lion seats will be pro­duced for the To­ba­go route

“We have been pro­duc­ing over 1 mil­lion seats to To­ba­go and there­fore it is wrong to say that To­ba­go is cut off and not ser­viced. There are 14000 flights per year, I mean 14000 flights per year that can­not be dis­missed and those are sub­sidised flights and we want to work to­wards im­prove­ment and the uti­liza­tion , so CAL will con­tin­ue to meet with the THA,” he al­so said.

Row­ley said be­tween CAL and the THA and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty “we will look at some im­prove­ment in the sched­ul­ing and of course a re­quest was made CAL to try and bring a di­rect ser­vice in from North Amer­i­ca to To­ba­go.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said the San­dals project was still in the pipeline. He said To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor would ben­e­fit from a San­dals in­vest­ment com­mit­ment.

He re­mind­ed that a MoU ex­ists be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the San­dals brand. The project is said to be at the sur­vey stage.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored