Whith­field Turn­er

As the na­tion cel­e­brates 48 years of in­de­pen­dence, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Orville Lon­don is urg­ing cit­i­zens to take time to re­flect and greater as­sist in na­tion-build­ing.

In his In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage, Lon­don not­ed that cit­i­zens were de­mand­ing greater in­volve­ment in the gov­er­nance of the coun­try. Ac­cord­ing to Lon­don, mem­bers of his Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil will be em­bark­ing on a se­ries of "meet the com­mu­ni­ties/meet the sec­tors" dis­cus­sions af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bud­get on Sep­tem­ber 8. These meet­ings, Lon­don said, would be in­stru­men­tal in de­ter­min­ing the needs and pri­or­i­ties of the peo­ple.

Lon­don said sug­ges­tion box­es would be post­ed at strate­gic lo­ca­tions across To­ba­go so that mem­bers of the pub­lic could play a greater role in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. Urg­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to move be­yond "po­lit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship and pub­lic pos­tur­ing," Lon­don said the in­tegri­ty of any in­sti­tu­tion or of­fice must not be sac­ri­ficed on "the whims of the of­fice-hold­ers." He said "loy­al­ty" to To­ba­go and con­cern for its de­vel­op­ment must rein para­mount.

Re­gard­ing the is­sue of tourism, Lon­don rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment main­tain sub­si­dies on the air and sea bridges to en­sure tourism was af­ford­able. He not­ed that ini­tia­tives made by the To­ba­go's Tourism Di­vi­sion has brought some mea­sure of re­lief to ho­tels and own­ers of guest hous­es.

While the is­sue of crime has re­mained a ma­jor con­cern, Lon­don, how­ev­er, claimed se­ri­ous crimes were down, adding that there has been an in­crease in the de­tec­tion rate. Lon­don al­so promised to pro­vide greater job op­por­tu­ni­ties to the youths, say­ing that too many of them were "ven­tur­ing in­to tra­di­tion­al but over­crowd­ed ar­eas for em­ploy­ment."