The T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTI­TOA) has re­ject­ed what it de­scribes as an un­bal­anced por­tray­al of the coun­try in a re­cent ar­ti­cle pub­lished by The Tele­graph in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The ar­ti­cle, ti­tled “From tourism to ter­ror: The Caribbean is­land torn apart by gangs and guns,” claims T&T is over­whelmed by gang vi­o­lence, cit­ing a surge in asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions to the UK and the coun­try’s prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela as con­tribut­ing fac­tors in the trans­ship­ment of co­caine to Eu­rope.

“Cit­i­zens are clam­our­ing for gun laws to be eased so they can de­fend them­selves. The gangs, mean­while, have all the weapon­ry they need, much of it linked to the grow­ing pres­ence of co­caine car­tels from near­by Latin Amer­i­ca. Trinidad lies just sev­en miles off Venezuela and, with its his­toric links to Britain, is a po­ten­tial tran­sit point for Eu­rope-bound co­caine,” the ar­ti­cle states.

It said 439 asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions were made from T&T to the UK in the past year—a nine-fold in­crease over the past decade.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, TTI­TOA pres­i­dent Lor­raine Pouchet said the ar­ti­cle fails to re­flect the ex­pe­ri­ences of thou­sands of vis­i­tors who trav­el to T&T safe­ly each year.

“The re­cent por­tray­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go does a dis­ser­vice to the depth, com­plex­i­ty, and vi­bran­cy of our twin-is­land na­tion. While we ac­knowl­edge the se­ri­ous so­cial is­sues fac­ing some ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, the ar­ti­cle fails to re­flect the over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences of the thou­sands of vis­i­tors who con­tin­ue to ex­plore our is­lands each year in safe­ty and won­der,” Pouchet said.

She added: “Our mem­bers work in close part­ner­ship with lo­cal and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to en­sure guest safe­ty and well-or­gan­ised tour ex­pe­ri­ences. These part­ners are best po­si­tioned to of­fer per­son­alised, se­cure, and mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences that re­flect the true spir­it of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

In its state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion called on in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia to re­port with greater con­text and bal­ance.

TTI­TOA reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able, re­spon­si­ble tourism and ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to glob­al trav­ellers to ex­pe­ri­ence “the warmth, cre­ativ­i­ty, and au­then­tic­i­ty” of T&T.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne al­so re­spond­ed to the ar­ti­cle, say­ing, “As a pa­tri­ot­ic Op­po­si­tion, we take no joy in this very neg­a­tive com­men­tary from abroad about our twin-is­land re­pub­lic. The re­al­i­ty is that the UNC cam­paigned heav­i­ly on is­sues re­lat­ed to vi­o­lent crime, and now in of­fice, their pri­or­i­ties are more fo­cused on be­stow­ing po­lit­i­cal priv­i­lege on their cho­sen peo­ple, putting or­di­nary hard work­ers on the bread­line, and blam­ing the PNM for mat­ters that fall ful­ly with­in the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment.”

Browne claimed no sig­nif­i­cant an­ti-crime mea­sures had been im­ple­ment­ed since the UNC took of­fice.

“As we ap­proach the end of the UNC’s first quar­ter since be­ing elect­ed, this na­tion has not seen the im­ple­men­ta­tion of even one rel­e­vant an­ti-crime mea­sure un­der their tenure. It demon­strates that this is­sue was a pri­or­i­ty for their cam­paign but not for their regime in of­fice.”

Asked yes­ter­day whether the Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the tourism im­pact, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­vest­ment Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia he had seen the ar­ti­cle sev­er­al times.