KAY­MAR JOR­DAN

Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

kay­mar.jor­dan@guardian.co.tt

There is lin­ger­ing scep­ti­cism sur­round­ing the con­struc­tion of a new San­dals lux­u­ry re­sort in To­ba­go, de­spite the re­cent green light giv­en by lo­cal stake­hold­ers for the in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel chain to sub­mit a new de­vel­op­ment pro­pos­al for the is­land.

Dur­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing chaired by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at his Blenheim res­i­dence ear­li­er this month, San­dals Re­sort In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Adam Stew­art was in­vit­ed by key po­lit­i­cal and tourism stake­hold­ers to re­con­sid­er in­vest­ing in the is­land, af­ter a failed first at­tempt six years ago to bring the world-renowned brand to the is­land.

How­ev­er, asked if they sup­port the re­turn of San­dals to To­ba­go, re­spon­dents to an April 10-13 in­de­pen­dent sur­vey, con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany, ap­peared ap­pre­hen­sive on the is­sue.

“A plu­ral­i­ty of the sur­vey (47%) were in the very-sup­port­ive/sup­port­ive zone, while 31 per cent were in the very un­sup­port­ive-un­sup­port­ive zone. Twen­ty-two per cent said they were neu­tral.”

This re­sult led Pro­fes­sor Ghany to con­clude that “there ap­pears to still be some lin­ger­ing con­cerns from the last at­tempt to in­stall a San­dals project in To­ba­go which is cap­tured in the 22% who say that they are neu­tral”.

How­ev­er, the poll­ster ac­knowl­edged that “de­pend­ing on how they (the un­de­cid­ed) even­tu­al­ly de­cide, there could be ma­jor­i­ty sup­port for the project in the fu­ture.”

Ear­marked for the Buc­coo and Gold­en Grove es­tates, the build­ing of a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar San­dals re­sort has be­come some­thing of a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball with the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment ac­cus­ing its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents of run­ning away the de­vel­op­ers, ow­ing to pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy and neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty.

“The San­dals peo­ple, on the in­vi­ta­tion of the gov­ern­ment of TT had looked at To­ba­go and agreed that To­ba­go was a place that they would in­vest. But we chased them away, ac­cused them of all man­ner of evil, telling lies on them, try­ing to em­bar­rass them, try­ing to dam­age their prod­uct,” com­plained for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley af­ter the de­vel­op­ers pulled out of the project in Jan­u­ary 2019.

How­ev­er, the main Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has sought to make it clear that while it is not op­posed to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the San­dals group in­vest­ing in a ho­tel in To­ba­go, its on­ly con­cern is “the lack of trans­paren­cy and the lack of open ac­count­abil­i­ty by the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the PNM for this project”.

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine has al­so been forced to de­fend his stance on the mat­ter, say­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans re­ject­ed the ini­tial San­dals project be­cause it was “un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and did not make prop­er eco­nom­ic sense”.

He al­so said the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing signed by the PNM gov­ern­ment did not meet en­vi­ron­men­tal best prac­tices or the “stan­dards that we want­ed.”

Amid a no­tice­able pub­lic di­vide on the mat­ter, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots Leader Wat­son Duke has al­so stat­ed that while he was nev­er against San­dals, he was against the method­ol­o­gy pro­posed for build­ing the lux­u­ry ho­tel in To­ba­go.

“And I will al­ways be against that method­ol­o­gy where the gov­ern­ment fi­nances and builds every­thing and then asks San­dals to come and op­er­ate it and then put our peo­ple as wait­er boys and wait­er girls.

“We don’t want to build a na­tion of wait­er boys and wait­er girls. We want to build a na­tion of for­ward-think­ing peo­ple, peo­ple who are prime min­is­ter ma­te­r­i­al, peo­ple who are lead­er­ship ma­te­r­i­al and peo­ple who can take To­ba­go to the next lev­el.

“Un­til I see our peo­ple tak­ing the high jobs in San­dals and com­mand­ing the eco­nom­ic heights of our coun­try, I would be con­tin­u­ous­ly ar­gu­ing for that. To­bag­o­ni­ans need to com­mand the heights of our econ­o­my and be the lead­ers and not the tail bear­ers. I am to­tal­ly against that,” he told re­porters re­cent­ly.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the April 7 meet­ing in­volv­ing the Trinidad gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cials, as well as oth­er To­ba­go stake­hold­ers, Stu­art said it was agreed to start over with “a clean slate” and to ask San­dals to re­con­sid­er To­ba­go for ho­tel in­vest­ment in the Caribbean.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­port­ed that the col­lec­tive fo­cus of par­tic­i­pants - in­clud­ing Au­gus­tine, Duke, the Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­pha Lord, the Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris and the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce chair­man Cur­tis Williams - was on en­sur­ing To­ba­go’s growth as a com­pet­i­tive glob­al tourism des­ti­na­tion.

He fur­ther re­vealed that San­dals was now will­ing to use its own funds for the in­vest­ment.

No up­date has been forth­com­ing since then.

The all-in­clu­sive ho­tel chain cur­rent­ly has prop­er­ties in Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas, St Lu­cia, An­tigua, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­raçao, and St Vin­cent.