Killing The Golden Goose - Part 1

8 SUNDAY 1 MARCH 2020

SPECIAL REPORT

SUNDAY EXPRESS

Killing the golden goose PART ONE

SAD’s Alternative Development Plan STAKEHOLDERS Against Destruction for Toco (SAD) was formed after the rejection by the community of the UNC-backed Toco Port & Ferry Project in 2000.

SAD produced a development plan with a vision of an alternative future. It’s a document bursting with good ideas for the sustainable development of that entire area of north east Trinidad based on tourism, with Toco at its heart.

Coincidentally, TIDCO, a former incarnation of T&T’s tourism body, agreed with them.

Their “Master Tourism Plan” earmarked Toco as a centre of ecotourism in Trinidad.

SAD’s plan calls for community participation in sustainable development, promoting the rich biodiversity of the area.

“Our entire country will gain something priceless by having one region dedicated to remaining healthy and unpolluted, in harmony with nature,” said SAD. “As the stress of modern urban life continues to increase, more and more people seek to get away to a natural environment, to renew their energies and revive their inner spirit.

“Toco residents will specialise in providing this valuable service; sharing with visitors all the things that Toco people like most about Toco”.

SAD believed “this alternative development plan can be a model basis for co-operation between community, the government, international agencies, and NGOs. “The scale of economic activity that will be generated by these development initiatives far exceeds the level of investment required for their initiation . . . an investment that will benefit the entire country,” they said.

The new road to Toco is now being built which could facilitate these ideas. It’s a route laden with possibilities for sustainable tourism based on the region’s natural assets.

SAD’s 26-page proposal for Toco is a soundly articulated document, striking in its imagination, clarity and common sense. It should be required reading by the PM and his Cabinet.

They would learn of plans for: Salibay Beach, a toco food pavilion, Keshorn Walcott Lighthouse Park, a surfing centre, volleyball, mountain biking, ecotourism centre, ecotourism, hiking & birding trails, marketing Toco, agriculture, organic Toco, Toco’s Farming and Agricultural Resource Management (FARM) centre, fishing, sports, cultural and social Toco, a creative arts centre, community library, hospitality & restaurant training, and much, much more.

You can view SAD’s Alternative Development Plan at: https://www.skyecodev.org/public-information-portal

In “The creature that ate the blue lagoon” published on February 9, Mark Meredith looked at how Toco as we know it will vanish, consumed by a monster port the Keith Rowley Government is determined to build, no matter the consequences. Those consequences, say critics, will negatively impact the social fabric of Toco, its environment, biodiversity and tourism; potential golden eggs for this region of Trinidad smashed for an omelette of political opportunism and scrambled priorities. However, there is another way. Here’s what he found...

I

N 2000, after one of many exhausting drives from Port of Spain to Toco and a busy day of interviews reporting on the Toco Port and Ferry Project, I decided some relaxation was in order.

I headed to Salibay beach (also called Salybia) to chill out.

Wow! What a beach! I had no idea such a beautiful coastline existed in all of Trinidad.

Salibay looked like it belonged in Tobago. I was stunned.

This gorgeous bay, with its own fringing coral reef, epitomised all that a Caribbean beach should be: a graceful arc of golden sand ringed by coconut palms; the ultimate attraction for the visiting, sun-seeking tourist.

No wonder SAD for Toco, the group formed by Toco residents in 2000 to come up with an Alternative

Development Plan (see sidebar), featured Salibay on its document cover.

No wonder they were so optimistic about the possibilities that lay ahead for Toco as the “leader in the preservation and promotion of a healthy environment; the green and clean corner of Trinidad and Tobago.”

It could certainly be that, I thought, as I stretched out on the golden sand, cold Carib in hand, watching pelicans sweep low over the reef and out of sight beyond the headland of coconut trees.

Toco had it all, except the infrastructural development they needed to take advantage of their good fortune.

Twenty years on, Toco still doesn’t have any of the basic infrastructure they so badly need. SAD’s impressive plan for Toco lies forgotten, gathering dust.

And Salibay beach, that heaven-sent golden egg, has, for all intents and purposes, been smashed.

The Ghetto Beach

GLORY DAYS: Salibay in all its glory 20 years ago.

–Photo: MARK MEREDITH

Salibay has been given a new name by the locals— The Ghetto Beach.

It’s become a shanty town: a mishmash of concrete, galvanised iron sheets and plastic, strangely connected with electricity by T&TEC and water by WASA, but no sewerage.

A stinking, stagnant stream leaches waste onto the reef.

Fishing boats tied up to coconut trees which haven’t been chopped down, bob in the shallows where bathers once frolicked.

The fishermen, having given up hope of the crumbling fishing depot in Toco Bay ever being fixed, have moved to Salibay.

The beach, I’m informed, is strewn with fish waste and general detritus of those who have invaded, often to a soundtrack of booming music that must scare any turtles witless.

It certainly scares off everyone else. “No sane person goes there. It’s a complete madhouse,” I was told.

This is very significant.

Diversification and the growth of the tourist product are specific reasons given for building the Government’s port in Toco.

“The marina and hotel facilities will encourage development of the tourism sector in north east Trinidad,” is the sentiment.

I wanted to know from our Minister of Tourism, Randall Mitchell, how the country could believe that?

How the Government plans to boost tourism by building a large port in Toco could be considered realistic, especially given what has happened to Salibay?

Mitchell’s ministry’s website boasts that they “serve as a catalyst in making Trinidad and Tobago a premier tourist destination”.

Did he imagine that any other tourism body in the Caribbean would allow such a prize asset like Salibay to deteriorate to this shameful, lawless state?

He was informed of the “obscene amount of land-grabbing taking place in the area ever since the port plans were first announced”.

If they can’t look after a beach, how would they

SPECIAL REPORT

SUNDAY 1 MARCH 2020 9

SUNDAY EXPRESS ‘THE GHETTO BEACH: Salibay beach today has become a lawless shanty town, a prize tourism asset destroyed.

ASHAMED: Winston Montano.

–Photo: ROBERT TAYLOR

fare with Toco?

All four e-mails went unacknowledged.

However, Senator Clarence Rambharat, Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, told me he was “doing some work on that Salibay matter”.

Machel’s dad emotional One of the most scathing critics of the port plan and the Government’s attitude towards tourism is Winston Montano, father of soca star Machel.

Montano owns Jammev Beach Resort, a 16-room hotel that caters for 45 guests off Galera Road which leads to the lighthouse.

He could barely contain his emotion over the port plan in a lengthy phone conversation, especially over Salibay.

“That used to be the most beautiful, naturally lovely beach, one of the best on the island and now it has been turned into a ghetto.

“I am too ashamed to carry any visitors there. I can’t express how frustrated and hurt I feel after 18 years to see everything in Toco so deteriorated,” he lamented. “I’ve done everything I can to make a nice venue for tourists to visit.

“No authority cares about us. But these people squat with electricity and water. How can we trust the Government when they can allow this destruction?

“I think their development plan is to ghettoise the entire country, promoting doom and gloom.”

Would the money be better spent enhancing and developing Toco as a tourist destination, rather than building the port?

“That’s exactly my feeling,” said Montano. “People here have suffered so long that they’re anxious to grab any opportunity that comes along without understanding the consequences. People don’t comprehend how this port will change everything in a bad way and mash people up.

“They want to bring in a modern industrialised port servicing the oil and gas industry to a local population that is under-trained, under-equipped, and under-prepared. How will we cope?

What contribution will we reap? How will we benefit, apart from menial jobs?

“They will bring in outsiders to build and work on all the supply systems of a modern port. We in Toco will be servants.”

I told him of the hotel planned for the port, an extravagant four-storey structure.

Montano said it was small scale tourism that should be encouraged, “not a huge footprint like this”. It would damage local businesses already here, not that he minded competition.

“Tourists are not coming to Toco to stay in an industrial port,” he said.

I asked about the tourists that do come to Toco.

“My guests come to Toco because it is picturesque, calm, serene, clean. That is the calling card for tourists.”

He said there was an accommodation shortage for tourists, and not enough locally trained people in the tourism business.

He suggested the Trinidad and Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute in Chaguaramas set up a department at Toco Secondary School to facilitate training for local youth.

Did he think tourists would come from Tobago to Toco by ferry?

“I don’t think so. Most of our visitors are Trinidadians coming for the peace and quiet, the natural vibe, nature and turtles, to get away from crime, the stress, to be able to walk out of their doors without worry.”

Lengthy journey Sean Clarke of the Tobago Hotel & Tourism Association gave a view from the sister isle.

He believed the port was “pie in the sky” and that “from a purely economic point of view I cannot see this functioning”.

He said that when Tobagonians use the airbridge after getting to Piarco they are faced with a “further

huge taxi fee $200-$250 to Port of Spain”, depending on time of day.

“I fear to think what they will

charge from Toco. Without a reliable public transport service from Toco we will be at the mercy of so-called taxis holding travellers to ransom with exorbitant fees.”

Clarke said the time to and from Toco by any means of transport must be considered, and that “this is mainly to accommodate one ferry that is not suitable for the purpose anyway”.

He said the ferry terminal in Port of Spain “is unbearable at times and the yard too small for the ferries that we need, and should be moved. But definitely not to Toco”.

Clarke suggested moving the terminal to the MovieTowne area or somewhere near where an efficient bus service will only be required to get travellers to Port of Spain and the PTSC hub.

“The money for Toco port can be better spent, on these ideas, and ensuring that we have the types of boats that can do the passage,” he advised.

In part 2 of this series Mark Meredith gets more tourism stakeholder feedback. A headsup: there’s plenty they’d like to see, but a Toco port isn’t one of them