“PDP (Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots) should zi­pline their lip.”

That’s how the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine re­spond­ed to queries about the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2016 re­port on a zip line canopy project un­der her tenure as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Tourism Sec­re­tary.

She is the par­ty’s can­di­date for the Lam­beau/Sig­nal Hill elec­toral dis­trict in the Jan­u­ary 25 THA elec­tions.

One of the PDP’s deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers Far­ley Au­gus­tine drew the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion to the project’s de­tails on Sun­day at the PDP’s Gar­den Side dri­ve-in meet­ing.

Quot­ing from the re­port, he said: “A ser­vice agree­ment that was dat­ed the 12th of June, 2015, showed that the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion con­tract­ed a British Vir­gin Is­lands cor­po­ra­tion lo­cat­ed at Tor­to­la to de­sign, de­vel­op and con­struct a ‘High An­gle ‘ Canopy Tour Course in the Main Ridge For­est at an ini­tial cost of US$531,610. The Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil’s ap­proval for the es­tab­lish­ment of this fa­cil­i­ty, how­ev­er, was not avail­able for au­dit.”

He con­tin­ued: “ The sum of $2,511,210.20 was paid to the Cor­po­ra­tion up to the 30th Sep­tem­ber 2016 for ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment; how­ev­er, the ex­is­tence of these as­sets was not ver­i­fied. A vis­it to the store’s sec­tion of the di­vi­sion re­vealed on­ly some ropes on hand,” Far­ley read to laugh­ter from the crowd.

The PDP can­di­date for Par­latu­vi­er/ L’Anse Four­mi/ Spey­side said the PNM had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that “85 per cent of the equip­ment was in To­ba­go.”

He said he in­ves­ti­gat­ed the Tor­to­la com­pa­ny and dis­cov­ered it went bank­rupt.

“ I dis­cov­ered they (Tourism Di­vi­sion) were tak­ing the ma­te­r­i­al and stor­ing them in a com­pa­ny in Mi­a­mi...the stor­age com­pa­ny went bank­rupt ...It means our equip­ment are rack­ing up hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in stor­age fees and will now be sub­ject to auc­tion. We might be look­ing for a zip line in our rain­for­est, but we will nev­er get as much as a piece of a ny­lon string.”

PNM To­ba­go re­sponds

On Jan­u­ary 11, in a press re­lease from the PNM’s is­land coun­cil, it was in­di­cat­ed that:..” Al­though that project was com­mis­sioned when David­son-Ce­les­tine was Sec­re­tary for Tourism and Trans­porta­tion, work had bare­ly start­ed when she left of­fice.”

The re­lease quot­ed the for­mer sec­re­tary as say­ing: “Start­ing some­thing and not com­plet­ing it un­der your term of of­fice can­not be tan­ta­mount to mis­man­age­ment.”

The re­lease said the zi­pline project is on­go­ing.

“I am very re­sults-ori­ent­ed ... and my ad­min­is­tra­tion will en­sure that we de­liv­er on those fa­cil­i­ties promised. In­vest­ment in sites and at­trac­tions are crit­i­cal in ex­pand­ing eco and ad­ven­ture tourism. So de­liv­er­ing at least two zi­plines is a pri­or­i­ty for us go­ing for­ward,” David­son- Ce­les­tine was quot­ed as say­ing.

The re­lease took a swipe at PDP’s leader Wat­son Duke.

“... I am not sur­prised that the PDP doesn’t un­der­stand that you can’t be in charge of some­thing when you’re not in the of­fice, giv­en that the par­ty’s founder has been more miss­ing than found in To­ba­go.”