PDP leader: Upgraded Manta Lodge a 'romping shop'

PROGRESSIVE Democratic Patriots (PDP) political leader Watson Duke has alleged that the refurbished Manta Lodge in Speyside is a den of iniquity.

The keys for the two-star hotel and dive centre were handed over to the THA in February 2023 and Chief Secretary Farley Augustine announced then that tenders for managing it would be put out. An operator has not yet been selected.

At a news conference on June 20 at the PDP’s headquarters, Port Mall, Scarborough, Duke called on the Farley Augustine-led THA to provide an update on the hotel in his budget presentation on June 24 in the Assembly Legislature.

He said he was very concerned about the dollars spent to bring Manta Lodge to an overall cost of $32 million.

“They have refurbished it and I am being told that Manta Lodge is being used as a ‘romping shop’ for certain elite persons, and the tourists can’t get there. That is what I being told,” Duke alleged, saying as a result it was prevented from generating revenue.

Saying Tobago, under the Augustine administration, has become “an island of lost dreams,” Duke said the PDP’s plan, even before it won the December 6, 2021, THA elections, was to set up co-operatives in several rural communities, mainly within the eastern part of the island, to run Manta Lodge.

“Because when people are investing in their own projects, they take care of it more, and you want to see something because you stand to benefit from it. The PDP presented a win-win-win strategy for all of those projects that the government would have taken on and are going nowhere. When I say win-win-win, there must be a win for the Tobago people.”