Chief Sec: Tobagonians not treated with dignity at Port of Spain port

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine has slammed what he considers the poor treatment often meted out to Tobagonians and other travellers at the Port of Port of Spain.

He was speaking on Tuesday at a stakeholder consultation on inter-island transportation and connectivity at Mt Irvine Bay Resort, Tobago.

Augustine said even before boarding vessels, passengers are not properly catered for at the port.

He said they often have to make a “mad dash” across the busy Wrightson Road to get to the port.

“They built a walkover nearby, but they did not even consider the travellers between Trinidad and Tobago, to think that there needs to be a solution at Wrightson Road…You who coming from Tobago has to still make that dash across the road. Nobody really care about you.”

Augustine said when the passengers get to the port, they have to “stand up under a tent in the sun and rain in the most undignified manner.

“It baffles me why, in this day and age, you have to be herded under a tent like cattle. Rain come, sun come, and you under a tent squeeze up. You just stand up there under a tent because the facilities might be too good for you to wait in.”

Augustine said “a next set of herding” occurs at the ticket counter.

“You are there in the hot downstairs waiting to go upstairs and wait for a long while. Eventually someone will come and move the chain and you pass through security and then you sit in the waiting area.”

He said an employee then decides which rows should be the first to board the vessel.

“Everybody is hoping that the row they are seated in is the lucky row that morning or afternoon to get onto the vessel.

“But this is 2023. Why can’t we have a system where the boat is there parked, waiting? Why can’t we have a system where people, much earlier, can be processed and go on the vessel?”

He said if this were the case, people could buy food, watch a movie and wait until departure.

“Why can’t we get that organised by this time?”

The reality, Augustine believes, is that nobody sees transport as important.

“So people are moved the same way cargo is moved. Because with cargo you can just fling it down anywhere and take it across and pick it up and drop it off. So in similar fashion, people are made to be flung anywhere, picked up and dropped off in 2023.”

Turning his attention to the airbridge, he said although Caribbean Airlines (CAL) often talks about operating at a loss whenever it puts on additional flights between the islands, “What they not telling you is how the maths is mathsing.”

Augustine argued if CAL said there were 5,000 empty seats on additional flights for any given period, those seats could come either from the Trinidad-to-Tobago leg of the trip or vice versa, depending on the activities taking place on both islands.

“If the attraction at that time of year is in Tobago, then the majority of the population will be moving to Tobago. So those will be 100 per cent booked out with the excess. But those going in the opposite direction will be far less than those coming to Tobago.”

Using Carnival as an example, he said, “There is a bigger pull going to Port of Spain than coming to Tobago.”

He added the same principle applies for Tobagonians who may go to Trinidad to get last-minute supplies for their children for the reopening of school.

“Seasonally, the bulk of the travellers will be coming from one island versus the other.”

Augustine said there is a cost to the larger economy.

“No tourism-based economy can work without the movement of people. This is the basic element. As a matter of public transportation, we need to have connectivity between the two islands.

“In the same way I can take a PTSC bus to the furthest part in south Trinidad and east, one must be able to get transportation to go to and from Tobago.”