Sto­ry by CAMILLE McEACH­NIE

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has be­gun to put to­geth­er emer­gency eco­nom­ic pack­ages of its own, to sup­port To­bag­o­ni­ans dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis.

Con­fir­ma­tion has come from Fi­nance Sec­re­tary, Joel Jack, who ex­plained that the THA pack­ages will be in ad­di­tion to the stim­u­lus mon­e­tary and fis­cal pack­ages of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment, to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of COVID-19 on the is­land.

Sec­re­tary Jack not­ed that many stake­hold­ers in To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor are feel­ing the full brunt of the fall­out from the pan­dem­ic and may be forced to close their busi­ness­es this week.

He said THA had es­ti­mat­ed that more than 5,000 work­ers—in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the tourism sec­tor—will be re­trenched.

How­ev­er, the fi­nance sec­re­tary gave as­sur­ances that the THA will con­tin­ue to work with all busi­ness­es to pre­vent fur­ther fall­out, not­ing that it had its own stim­u­lus pack­age.

Speak­ing at this week's post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, on Wednes­day, at the Ann Mitchell Gift Au­di­to­ri­um of the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary, Sec­re­tary Jack in­di­cat­ed that the THA is ask­ing the cen­tral gov­ern­ment for $45 mil­lion, in the first in­stance, and he out­lined how the mon­ey will be spent.

“In the To­ba­go con­text, we have an im­por­tant role to play and there­fore, dur­ing our de­lib­er­a­tions at the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, we out­lined a num­ber of mea­sures,” he ex­plained. “In treat­ing with the di­rect cost to cov­er COVID or the health-re­lat­ed cost, we will be seek­ing ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to cov­er it to the tune of $45 mil­lion. That is our first es­ti­mate.”

He added: “We will con­tin­ue to work with our clients dur­ing our loan pro­gram. We will seek, as well, to ex­pe­dite the pay­ment to our sup­pli­ers and our con­trac­tors, es­pe­cial­ly most of them in small and medi­um-term em­ploy­ment en­ter­pris­es."

Last week, se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials met with the THA in To­ba­go.

At the me­dia brief­ing that fol­lowed, it was stat­ed that To­bag­o­ni­ans will share the same ben­e­fits with their Trinidad coun­ter­parts.

Some of the ben­e­fits in­clude grant and loan fa­cil­i­ties al­ready ex­ist­ing with the gov­ern­ment and THA; salary re­lief up to $1,500 for tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed work­ers; tem­po­rary food cards worth $150 for fam­i­lies who ac­cessed the School Feed­ing Pro­gram; and rental as­sis­tance.