The an­nounce­ment by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis that the As­sem­bly will be spend­ing an ad­di­tion­al $10 mil­lion on the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel to ready it for guests is of con­cern if it will not lead to tax­pay­ers re­cov­er­ing the mil­lions al­ready spent on a prop­er­ty that has nev­er wel­comed a sin­gle guest.

Den­nis, who re­cent­ly took over the po­si­tion as Chief Sec­re­tary, yes­ter­day re­vealed that 24 ad­di­tion­al high-end rooms would be added to To­ba­go’s room stock by the end of this year. He said the ren­o­va­tion and re­fur­bish­ment costs should be ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 mil­lion and there are some “promis­ing op­tions” to man­age the ho­tel, which will not be op­er­at­ed by the THA.

The Man­ta Lodge is a dive re­sort at Spey­side and was pur­chased on No­vem­ber 19, 2015, for $8 mil­lion. An­oth­er ho­tel, Sanc­tu­ary Re­sort, was ac­quired for $24 mil­lion. Both pur­chas­es were made un­der Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, who was then Tourism Sec­re­tary.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Den­nis, re­fur­bish­ment on the Sanc­tu­ary Re­sort will be done at a lat­er date as there will be a sig­nif­i­cant cost and the THA is hop­ing to at­tract an in­vestor for that fa­cil­i­ty.

To be sure, Mr Den­nis is not re­spon­si­ble for the débâ­cle he met and un­der his lead­er­ship.

What is, how­ev­er, wor­ry­ing is Mr Den­nis' own ad­mis­sion that the prop­er­ties were bought with­out any fea­si­bil­i­ty study and an ad­mis­sion that the THA it­self has no plan on op­er­at­ing the ho­tels.

The fact is the THA has no ex­pe­ri­ence and no record of be­ing a suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tor and we have heard ex­pla­na­tions from the As­sem­bly that it got the dis­tressed prop­er­ties for cents on the dol­lar. The chal­lenge is that even if the pur­chase was a good deal, it is clear there was no plan on how it could turn a prof­it for tax­pay­ers and no ex­pla­na­tion on how these ho­tels were strate­gic to the To­ba­go tourism prod­uct.

With the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals to To­ba­go hav­ing all but ground­ed to a halt even be­fore COVID-19, it is dif­fi­cult to see how this project will, in the short run, make a re­turn for tax­pay­ers.

While Mr Den­nis was nei­ther Tourism Sec­re­tary nor Chief Sec­re­tary at the time of the out­lay of tax­pay­ers' funds, his po­lit­i­cal leader and now Sec­re­tary of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices can­not es­cape such scruti­ny.

Thus-far, David­son-Ce­les­tine has re­mained mum on the pur­chase of the ho­tels and what was the think­ing be­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar spend. If David­son-Ce­les­tine wants to one-day lead To­ba­go, she must take own­er­ship of these and oth­er failed tourism projects when she head­ed the Tourism Di­vi­sion and ex­plain to the peo­ple of To­ba­go how they end­ed up with two prop­er­ties cost­ing mil­lions but which still cur­rent­ly on­ly hous­es bats and roach­es.

Per­haps David­son-Ce­lestin can learn from her young Chief Sec­re­tary, who ap­pears to want to bring some clo­sure to these mat­ters and to do so by open­ly ad­dress­ing the burn­ing is­sue of ac­count­abil­i­ty for pub­lic funds.