ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has al­ready paid over $1.1 mil­lion to the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) for its role in the oil spill clean-up ear­li­er this year.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, he said while the THA owes AT­FA more funds, claims sug­gest­ing no pay­ments have been made are in­ac­cu­rate.

He fur­ther asked dis­grun­tled fish­er­men, who claimed to have not re­ceived a dime, to re­fo­cus their anger, frus­tra­tion and de­mands in the right di­rec­tion—AT­FA.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, two pay­ments were is­sued to AT­FA on May 20: one for $641,200 and an­oth­er for $490,000, to­talling $1,131,200. He al­so con­firmed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 mil­lion re­mains out­stand­ing to AT­FA, with $2 mil­lion cur­rent­ly be­ing processed and ex­pect­ed to be paid soon.

Au­gus­tine com­mend­ed AT­FA’s work dur­ing the oil spill and de­fend­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s costs, say­ing the fish­er­men “worked hard and de­serve every red cent.” How­ev­er, he crit­i­cised its pres­i­dent for claim­ing that the THA had not made any pay­ments.

Au­gus­tine not­ed the chal­lenges faced by fish­er­men sub­con­tract­ed by AT­FA.

He said, “And so you AT­FA be­ing the re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion that I know you are, when you are paid you will take care of your ser­vice providers. I al­so ap­pre­ci­ate that there is a knock-on ef­fect mean­ing that the peo­ple you call out to work have not re­ceived their full pay­ments to dates be­cause you AF­TA have not re­ceived your full pay­ment.”

Au­gus­tine ex­plained that the de­lay in full pay­ments stemmed from lim­it­ed fund­ing from the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. While the THA re­quest­ed $153 mil­lion to cov­er oil spill-re­lat­ed ex­pens­es, on­ly $50 mil­lion was ap­proved and sent, he said.

The THA sup­ple­ment­ed this with $15 mil­lion from its own bud­get, but the funds re­main in­suf­fi­cient to cov­er all in­voic­es.

He as­sured AT­FA and its pres­i­dent, Cur­tis Dou­glas, that the re­main­ing $3 mil­lion will be paid in 2025.

Au­gus­tine com­mit­ted to set­tling all out­stand­ing amounts while bal­anc­ing oth­er es­sen­tial ex­pens­es for To­ba­go, such as school re­pairs and in­fra­struc­ture projects.

“When you are there in the pub­lic space, AT­FA, cussing and say­ing THA don’t want to pay you, that’s the fur­thest thing from the truth. The THA is re­al­ly pay­ing what it has.

“Let me be clear, AT­FA, the THA knows that it owes you and some oth­er ser­vice providers. The THA re­mains com­mit­ted to pay­ing you. The THA is not say­ing that it will not pay you at all.”

Mean­while, AT­FA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas stood by his ac­cu­sa­tions promis­ing to re­veal the truth on Mon­day.

Dou­glas in a short video re­sponse said he felt the as­so­ci­a­tion was be­ing sin­gled out.

“AF­TA was the on­ly or­gan­i­sa­tion on the first day, went out and made it clear to the world what was hap­pen­ing. But, yet we are to­day see­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary tar­get­ing the peo­ple who made a great con­tri­bu­tion.”

On Feb­ru­ary 7, the Gulf­stream barge over­turned and wrecked just off the coast of Cove, spilling a large amount of oil in­to the ocean and along the coast­line. Hun­dreds of vol­un­teers worked around the clock to re­store beach­es, and save wildlife.

Of­fi­cials man­aged to turn the barge up­right by Au­gust.