An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­most nine months af­ter rivers were re­opened, al­low­ing Kalpoo’s Ibis Tours to re­sume op­er­a­tions for a re­strict­ed pe­ri­od, co-own­er Navin Kalpoo says ear­ly in­di­ca­tors have high­light­ed sev­er­al chal­lenges that could be detri­men­tal to their busi­ness.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said, “I had over 100 phone calls on Mon­day from per­sons who are ex­cit­ed but from the minute you tell them the change in hours, they are say­ing my kids are go­ing to be in on­line class­es or I am go­ing to be at work.”

He said as a re­sult of this, many per­sons are now on­ly se­cur­ing book­ings on the week­end.

Beach­es were re­opened on De­cem­ber 18, 2021, from 5 am to noon dai­ly; while rivers were re­opened from Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 17). In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment on the re­open­ing of rivers last Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 15), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­tend­ed the clos­ing time for beach­es and rivers to 2 pm.

Yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said they are now of­fer­ing two tours from 9 am to 11 am and noon to 2 pm.

Ad­mit­ting they had en­joyed more trac­tion be­fore from peo­ple who had opt­ed for the evening tour from 4 pm to 6 pm, he said, “This is usu­al­ly more re­lax­ing and af­ter work and school hours.”

Grate­ful for the re­spons­es they have re­ceived so far for book­ings, he said they in­tend to ap­proach the Min­istry of Tourism to re­quest an ex­emp­tion in terms of the op­er­at­ing hours based on the na­ture and type of busi­ness they op­er­ate.

He added, “Due to the fact of who we are and be­cause we do not con­trol na­ture, these are the na­tion­al birds and they are wild, we can’t pro­gramme them.

“They usu­al­ly come in the late hours, just be­fore it gets dark so if some ex­emp­tions can be made for us in light of this, we would be ex­treme­ly grate­ful.”

Ide­al­ly, Kalpoo said their pre­ferred hours would be from 4 pm to 6.30 pm dai­ly.

Ex­pect­ing a dras­tic re­duc­tion in book­ings dur­ing the week, he said this would fur­ther neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the busi­ness, which had al­ready been hit hard dur­ing the clo­sure of the past eight months due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Hav­ing bat­tled to en­sure they sat­is­fied their loan oblig­a­tions and met the as­so­ci­at­ed costs of keep­ing their five boats op­er­a­tional dur­ing the shut­down, Kalpoo said he was un­cer­tain of how much longer they can con­tin­ue in this man­ner.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia as he was clear­ing and cut­ting grass for a friend who was kind enough to hire him yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said he had been forced to find oth­er work to sup­port him­self and his fam­i­ly dur­ing the clo­sure.

If the re­quest to op­er­ate out­side of the des­ig­nat­ed hours is re­ject­ed by the min­istries of Tourism and Health, Kalpoo said they would have to con­tin­ue to seek oth­er av­enues of rev­enue to earn a liveli­hood.

“We have been do­ing so many things to sur­vive...I don’t even want to think along those lines,” Kalpoo said.

“It’s been very, very hard to main­tain the boats and keep­ing them afloat. We con­tin­ue to main­tain them and pay­ing the in­sur­ance and li­cens­es, and we have to run them every so of­ten to make sure the ma­rine en­gines are not af­fect­ed by build-up…we are still pay­ing loans for some of our en­gines and boats so it has been very tough for us.”

Not­ing that the cur­rent hours would not pro­vide the re­lax­ing, scenic tour sce­nar­ios cus­tomers are ac­cus­tomed to, as the sun is hottest at mid­day and di­rect­ly over­head, he con­tin­ued, “In the af­ter­noon, you are look­ing over­head to see the snakes, the birds…and you can’t look up at the sun.”

He ad­mit­ted there are some per­sons just want­i­ng to get out­side so they are com­ing for­ward, but on­line school­ing was the biggest chal­lenge now as par­ents said it was just not pos­si­ble to make book­ings due to clash­es.

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for a com­ment on whether he would con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the op­er­at­ing hours for tour op­er­a­tors were un­suc­cess­ful, as he was in the Sen­ate for the ma­jor­i­ty of the day yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, a tourism of­fi­cial said they may be open to dis­cus­sions.

“We un­der­stand the chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with the 2 pm cut-off time and we are very much open to mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion for an ex­ten­sion of the time.”

Point­ing out that the tourism min­istry op­er­ates with­in the pa­ra­me­ters set out by the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, the of­fi­cial added, “We made rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer for a restart of the tours in the first place, so there is a con­stant di­a­logue be­tween the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, the Min­istry of Health and the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary tour op­er­a­tors.”