Tobago Chamber wants meeting on sea-bridge

Chairman of the Chamber Demi John Cruickshank in addressing reporters last week said that the letter was sent off to the board’s chairman Allison Lewis, as he is of the hope that they can sit around the table as was done previously.

“We have penned a letter and sent it out requesting an urgent meeting to see if we can solve this problem once and for all. Yes, we went through this fiasco already in the past and what we did is that we sat around the table with everybody and we discussed a way forward, a way how we can solve the problem but this regime is bent on doing things their way and they have seen that doing things their way is not in the best interest for all the people of Tobago. So, we are calling on the chairman to meet with us urgently,” he said.

The chairman referred to the present challenges aboard both the passenger and cargo vessels, which he said to date has resulted in a shortage of construction materials at hardwares as well as the low stocks on supermarket shelves.

“We have indicated to both the ministers and his members in Port of Spain that what we were saying a month ago has come to fruition in terms of the two fast ferries are giving serious problems mechanically, we do not have an adequate cargo service between Trinidad and Tobago even bringing on the barge and the Atlantic provider that still is causing some serious hardship for the business community, the truckers and also the citizens of Tobago. You have hardwares that are literally empty, the supermarket shelves are actually running low and people’s warehouses are questionable in terms of if we can continue in this manner, so we have to at some point in time bring some sort of closure to this crisis that we have been faced with and have been forced to endure by the powers that be who have the responsibility and the authority to fix this problem,” he said.

Cruickshank also responded to critics who have labeled the chamber members as ‘Hush Puppy and Hush dog team’.

“Let me put on record now, we have been the voice of the business community in Tobago, we have been championing the cause of Tobagonians and bringing the plight of the situation to the general public, so I am not too sure where he would have received that bit of information from and we take very, very serious offence to his statement as an organisation that has been working very, very hard and toothless to solve the problems in Tobago,” Cruickshank said.

President of the Hotel and Tourism Association (THTA) Chris James in adding his voice, noted that he is seriously concerned about the current situation as it will adversely affect the July/ August busy period.

“We are very seriously concerned about the position on both the air and sea bridge and as you may know July and August are our busiest times for our domestic tourism and normally the bookings are coming in around now for that period and we’re not seeing them coming in so this is an urgent situation for us and we are concerned,” James said.

The president said that the tourism industry has been on a serious decline for the last ten years.

This as he noted that hotels and guesthouses across the island have reported a number of last minute cancellations, which is adding to an already crippling situation.

“I’ve heard stories of people waiting over fourteen hours to get to Tobago, so on top of that we have last minute cancellations so accommodations are suffering from that because of either the air bridge or the sea bridge, we have a serious challenge here which is affecting our bottom line. We are currently averaging an occupancy of 34 percent from our figures, we represent the largest numbers of hotel rooms on the island. The region is averaging somewhere about 66 percent, our rate has now dropped to $154US and the rate in the region is US$228. So, we seriously depend on the months of July and August to keep us afloat,” he said. Meanwhile, President of the Interisland Truckers and Traders Association Horace Amede said that following meetings with both the Minister of Works and Transportation and the Port Authority board last week, they feel disrespected.

“They were supposed to call us and let us know if a vessel was found, but they never did and we saw it in the papers and to begin with, we thought that was disrespectful.

Up to now, we have not received any calls from them and apart from that they said that they would have meet in Tobago on Wednesday with the stakeholders, to bring us up to date on what is happening and up to now, we are just seeing things in the papers that the Chairman apologized to the people of Tobago and we don’t think that is good enough.

You cannot feed your families on apologies and this is what we are getting from everybody. From my standpoint and the truckers, nothing is wrong with saying I am sorry,” he said.

Amede said now is not the time to play games with people livelihood.

“Let us bring an end to the suffering that Tobagonians is going through. We have members in Trinidad for four and five days and cannot get back to Tobago at a rate of three hundred dollars a night in guesthouse but meals and that is not doing good for us at all,” he said.