Augustine: Tobago Coast Guard base 'not fit to mind swine'

THA CHIEF Secretary Farley Augustine says the Coast Guard base in Scarborough, Tobago, is not even fit to “mind swine,” let alone house security personnel.

He made the statement on January 23 while moving a motion during the first plenary sitting for 2025 in the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough.

The motion called on the Ministry of National Security to establish a memorandum of understanding aimed at providing proper and effective strategies for national security in Tobago.

It also called on the government to urgently increase the allocations of resources to Tobago for the maintenance, upgrade and modernisation of its national security infrastructure, including personal equipment, facilities and technology.

In presenting the motion, Augustine highlighted the deplorable state of the island’s national security infrastructure, which, he said, was seriously obstructing the fight against crime.

“When we go to the Coast Guard base itself, the Tobago headquarters located at lower Scarborough, at the end of Calypso Rose Boulevard, I am ashamed to even walk into that place. It is not even fitting to mind swine,” he told the House.

“But that’s where we have our men and women working out of. That same Coast Guard don’t have a boat to sail anywhere around the island.”

Augustine gave an example.

He said about four months ago, he received information that people were going to steal fishing vessels in Buccoo.

Augustine said he got a boat from a civilian for the Coast Guard officers to use. The officers, he said, could not use the boat because it was a civilian vessel.

“I run home, hunt for a black hoodie for the guy so that he could be masked in some way because he is now being co-opted to be part of a national security response.”

He said they were then told they had to get a police officer on the vessel “in order to facilitate proper charges.

“By the time we trying to organise all of that, the best approach was to just send some police in the Buccoo area, create a heightened presence so that you will scare away anybody who will want to come and steal a vessel. That is the state of border security on this island.”

Augustine said the Coast Guard’s operational base is also in a deplorable state.

“Madam Presiding Officer (Abby Taylor), if you go to the Coast Guard operational base – we have one operational base on island that was opened by Lennox Denoon as chairman of the Tobago House of Assembly - and not a fix, not an upgrade, not an addition, not anything since that time.

“Toilets backing up, sleeping conditions poor, paint falling off, coastal erosion because the operational base literally exists at the end of a jetty.”

Augustine said before the current THA administration assumed office in December 2021, the Auditor General’s department had flagged the assembly for spending money on national security since it is not a fifth schedule item.

“Because of that, we have in the space at present, Madam Presiding Officer, a very cautious, a very reluctant public service when it comes to issuing instructions from the executive to actually assist the national security apparatus on the island. It is a challenge I face almost on a monthly basis.”

He added, “We have resorted to a strategy where we ask the varied arms of national security to go looking for whatever service they need and then write us asking the THA to make a donation towards the provision of these services.

“And that is so that I can make the public accounting officers comfortable enough to assist the national security apparatus and agenda on the island.”

Notwithstanding this, Augustine said his administration has spent more than any other administration on national security, over the last three years.

“As a matter of fact, what we are experiencing is a situation where the executive council from time to time is asked to forgo other priorities so that we can pump the monies into the national security apparatus on the island.

“What we experienced last year in terms of our murder rate is unacceptable. And because it is unacceptable, we cannot sit on our hands in Tobago and simply say the law says it shall not be the responsibility of the THA and we will do nothing.

“I prefer to be challenged by the auditor general on this matter than to see more of our people gunned down in the streets. And so there is a requirement for bold action.”