Michelle Loubon

Stand­ing like a proud sen­tinel along the rugged north-east coast is the icon­ic To­co Light­house. Tourism Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith em­pha­sised the light­house had re­gained its sta­tus as a bea­con in the na­tion­al her­itage land­scape. He made this com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the To­co Light­house En­hance­ment Un­veil­ing, on Sep­tem­ber 19. The project is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC), Min­istries of Works and Trans­port, the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust.

Boast­ing over its new fea­tures, Grif­fith said: "The To­co Light­house has been trans­formed with restora­tion of the tow­er ex­te­ri­or, the ad­di­tion of safe­ty bar­ri­ers, out­door fur­ni­ture with­in the com­pound, land­scap­ing im­prove­ments that en­hance the first im­pres­sion of this his­toric site, new in­ter­pre­ta­tive sig­nage and restora­tion of wa­ter cis­terns." Grif­fith added: "There is a 10,000 square foot carpark and sig­nif­i­cant re­pairs, such as plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal works. Bur­glar-proof­ing and roof­ing works have been un­der­tak­en on the light­keep­er's build­ing." Grif­fith com­mend­ed all the stake­hold­ers for their in­put in pre­serv­ing a valu­able tourist at­trac­tion which would bet­ter serve vis­i­tors with a unique ex­pe­ri­ence.

Apart from do­mes­tic tourists, he not­ed in­ter­na­tion­al tourists will gain a snap­shot view of the flo­ra and fau­na. They would learn it was com­plet­ed in Oc­to­ber 1867 and of­fi­cial­ly opened on No­vem­ber 1, 1897.

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Among those who ad­dressed guests were TDC's new­ly ap­point­ed CEO San­dra Perkins. Perkins al­so thanked the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. They were joined by Kesh­war Ma­haraj, chair­man, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries Mel­ba Dedi­er and Myr­na Thomp­son. Stan­ley Beard, TDC chair­man, Rawle Mitchell, head of the His­tor­i­cal and Restora­tion Unit, and To­co Vil­lagers were present for the mile­stone in their com­mu­ni­ty.