Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go hote­liers and busi­ness own­ers fear that in­clud­ing the is­land in the pro­posed spe­cial op­er­a­tions dis­tricts could deal a se­vere blow to tourism.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, which was de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, di­vides the coun­try in­to sev­en dis­tricts, each head­ed by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer. With­in each dis­trict, cer­tain ar­eas can be des­ig­nat­ed as “closed ar­eas,” where en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures would be im­ple­ment­ed.

Cur­tis Williams, head of the To­ba­go arm of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said he was still try­ing to un­der­stand the pa­ra­me­ters of the bill but warned there would be push­back if re­stric­tions were placed on the en­tire is­land. He said he was hope­ful there would be no “closed ar­eas” in To­ba­go, as this would cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties for the pub­lic.

“This whole thing is very com­pli­cat­ed. I wish it was a bit sim­pler,” he said.

He even the des­ig­na­tion of “closed ar­eas” could hin­der busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty across the is­land due to re­stric­tions on move­ment.

“To­ba­go is way too small. It’s gonna af­fect every­body,” he said.

He not­ed that work­ers liv­ing in closed ar­eas could face dif­fi­cul­ties trav­el­ling to work­places out­side those ar­eas.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) pres­i­dent Regi­nald Mac Lean said stake­hold­ers had been look­ing for­ward to Thurs­day’s ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE). How­ev­er, with To­ba­go now pro­posed as one of the spe­cial op­er­a­tions dis­tricts, he be­lieves the mea­sure could fur­ther dam­age the tourism sec­tor.

“If To­ba­go is in­clud­ed in this zone (dis­trict) of spe­cial op­er­a­tions, the fi­nal nail of the cof­fin of To­ba­go is gonna be hit, and you’re gonna bury tourism. So much for tourism be­ing a pil­lar to keep the econ­o­my go­ing. If this is what the Gov­ern­ment wants, they are gonna kill the is­land’s tourism dead at this stage.”

Mac Lean said the SoE had al­ready caused con­sid­er­able prob­lems for the in­dus­try, with in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors un­able to ob­tain trav­el in­sur­ance for va­ca­tions to the is­land. He said with en­hanced po­lice pow­ers, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cur­fews and per­mits for move­ment in re­strict­ed ar­eas, he saw lit­tle dis­tinc­tion be­tween the pro­posed mea­sures and the SoE.

“If you’re leav­ing all of To­ba­go as a zone, that means, ba­si­cal­ly, To­ba­go is be­ing left un­der a SOE, and that makes ab­solute­ly no sense.”

Mac Lean and oth­er in­dus­try stake­hold­ers are cur­rent­ly on a tourism mis­sion in Trinidad. The To­ba­go con­tin­gent was at East Gates Mall, Trinci­ty, on Fri­day pro­mot­ing the is­land and will be at C3 Mall, San Fer­nan­do, to­day.

“If To­ba­go is be­com­ing a zone, that makes it worse for To­ba­go than it was be­fore un­der the SOE. At least un­der the SOE, peo­ple were get­ting used to it and we were mak­ing a few strides in terms of get­ting the oc­cu­pan­cy up. If you do that, it will be the fi­nal nail in To­ba­go’s cof­fin.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to pub­li­ca­tion time.