Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has pub­licly chas­tised maxi taxi dri­vers in To­ba­go for their fail­ure to con­duct tours for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 tourists on board the Celebri­ty Sil­hou­ette last Sat­ur­day, re­sult­ing in nu­mer­ous can­cel­la­tions. The vis­i­tors were left strand­ed on the dock af­ter maxi taxis did not show up.

Dur­ing a town hall meet­ing held in Black Rock on Tues­day night, Au­gus­tine lament­ed the rip­ple ef­fect through­out the in­dus­try, ex­press­ing con­cern that such ac­tions may prompt cruise ships to with­draw from the re­gion.

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, Au­gus­tine said, “If you know that your po­si­tion was that you are not go­ing to do it, be­cause you weren’t paid for some time in the past, just in­di­cate you are not do­ing the ser­vice. Don’t ac­cept the cruise and then not do it. That’s where I have a prob­lem.”

He said he would work with the as­so­ci­a­tion to pre­vent a re­cur­rence since that sin­gle move has left a dent in the is­land’s tourism in­dus­try.

Au­gus­tine added, “Oth­er cruis­es are ac­tu­al­ly threat­en­ing to pull out be­cause of this. The tourism mar­ket is so fick­le. We could do all this hard work, spend mon­ey to mar­ket the is­land and get peo­ple and one lit­tle thing could dec­i­mate the in­dus­try for the next four or five years.”

Au­gus­tine ad­vised the maxi taxi dri­vers to find oth­er av­enues to vent their dis­sat­is­fac­tion over non-pay­ment for the last cruise ship sea­son and leave the tourists out of it.

But, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, Clyde Williams, who was at the meet­ing, told Au­gus­tine and the au­di­ence that the is­sue lay in the se­vere short­age in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor.

He asked Au­gus­tine to in­ter­vene to help his as­so­ci­a­tion es­tab­lish a more sta­ble and or­gan­ised op­er­a­tion.

Mean­while, cruise line agent Charles Car­val­ho has com­mit­ted to pay­ing all out­stand­ing mon­ey owed to To­ba­go maxi taxi dri­vers.

He said while their ac­tions on Sat­ur­day could have af­fect­ed the is­land’s tourism rep­u­ta­tion and left him re­pair­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween his agency and the cruise line, he hoped To­ba­go es­tab­lished a cen­tralised trans­porta­tion agency to deal with tours dur­ing the cruise ship sea­son and move past this or­deal.

He said, “That $80,000 they are talk­ing about is go­ing to be paid out. There is noth­ing to say that is not go­ing to be paid off. “There is noth­ing se­ri­ous about what they are say­ing, we are try­ing to un­der­stand the lo­gis­tics. It’s ei­ther they are short of trans­porta­tion or re­li­gious or mon­ey is­sues. What is the is­sue?”

On Sun­day, the pres­i­dent of the is­land’s Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, Clyde Williams, said his mem­bers were owed $80,000, but Car­val­ho said the bal­ance was now $75,000.

He told Guardian Me­dia that he had asked the dri­vers to be le­nient and for more time to clear the debt con­sid­er­ing their health and busi­ness re­la­tion­ships in the past.

“They have been paid off for every ship for the last cruise ship sea­son. What they are speak­ing about is that I in­vest­ed a lot of mon­ey in a new cruise line that we were go­ing to bring on board in To­ba­go and Trinidad pri­or to COVID-19.”

This in­vest­ment fell through and the mon­ey that was put aside to pay the dri­vers was tied up in the lost deal.

Car­val­ho said he be­lieved Sat­ur­day’s in­ci­dent was un­in­ten­tion­al and feels it was due to poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the dri­vers.

“My main con­cern with To­ba­go is there must be dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ics with who is pro­vid­ing the trans­porta­tion. We can­not have a taxi dri­ver at­ti­tude to run­ning a busi­ness and pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion for tourists. We must have lev­el-head­ed peo­ple.”

He could not say what was the sta­tus of their re­la­tions but told Guardian Me­dia that he was in the process of round­ing up trans­porta­tion to cater to up to 800 paid tours for next Wednes­day’s cruise ship ar­rival.