“One step for­ward; two steps back­ward” are phras­es of a fa­mous 1976 song by Max Romeo and The Up­set­ters mean­ing that while progress is be­ing made in one area, there is re­gres­sion in a re­lat­ed part of an ef­fort to achieve an out­stand­ing goal. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems to ap­ply to many dif­fer­ent as­pects of our coun­try’s progress. Most re­cent­ly, it was dis­played in the con­tin­u­ing at­tempt by the tourism of­fi­cials in To­ba­go and Trinidad to en­cour­age cruise ship in­dus­try op­er­a­tors to fit the is­land in­to a per­ma­nent place along the chain of stops in the Caribbean.

A large tourist ship ar­rives loaded with peo­ple ea­ger to get a feel of an is­land so­ci­ety, hav­ing spent a sig­nif­i­cant part of their sav­ings, and we should not think of every tourist be­ing a mil­lion­aire with loads of mon­ey to ex­pend, but in­stead, are de­nied the ex­pe­ri­ence at the des­ti­na­tion. These peo­ple, who have saved for an ad­ven­ture of their lives to be able to see and ex­pe­ri­ence what was promised to them, found them­selves moored at the har­bour, maxi taxi dri­vers hav­ing de­cid­ed to stay away, in part be­cause they had not been paid for ser­vices pre­vi­ous­ly to oth­er groups of tourists.

This group of cruise vis­i­tors will not be in­ter­est­ed, and right­ly so, as to where the fault and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lie for the fail­ure of hav­ing max­is to take them around the is­land. What they know is that they have not been able to re­alise what they paid for, and that to them is un­for­giv­able. They have friends and rel­a­tives whom they will tell of this ex­pe­ri­ence in To­ba­go, and that will be an in­flu­en­tial fac­tor in where oth­er groups choose as des­ti­na­tion stops for their cruis­es.

Com­ing af­ter the event, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of tourism on the is­land, blast­ed the dri­vers for not mak­ing it known ear­ly on that they were not go­ing to turn up on the day to give the tourists a feel of the is­land cul­ture, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and sights.

For his re­sponse, cruise line op­er­a­tor Charles Car­val­ho ac­knowl­edged the debt owed to the dri­vers, in­sist­ing that the debt, said to be $80,000 by the To­ba­go Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, will be paid. Such state­ments af­ter the fact of fail­ing to make the pay­ments and/or ne­go­ti­at­ing a sol­id time­frame for pay­ment, may seem hol­low to the maxi taxi dri­vers and own­ers.

The re­al­i­ty is that the dri­vers are peo­ple of small cap­i­tal, whose op­er­a­tions are not able to take the kind of beat­ing which non-pay­ment for their work caus­es; it af­fects their day-to-day busi­ness. To­ba­go Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion head Clyde Williams al­so spoke to the se­vere short­ages in the trans­port in­dus­try on the is­land, which does not ac­count for what hap­pened on the day ei­ther.

What is clear from the po­si­tions adopt­ed and state­ments made by the var­i­ous in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions they head is the lack of co­or­di­na­tion, hon­est col­lab­o­ra­tion, and trust, based on per­for­mance amongst the groups for this vi­tal part of the tourism in­dus­try. It is even more un­for­giv­able when, both at the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA lev­els, the de­vel­op­ment of tourism on the is­land con­sis­tent­ly re­mains the out­stand­ing area for achieve­ment.