Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith B Yis­rael says there is no food cri­sis in To­ba­go.

She made the com­ment yes­ter­day, even as busi­ness own­ers con­tin­ued to ex­press con­cern that the con­tin­u­ing woes on the seabridge were lead­ing to short­ages in food and con­struc­tion items that could wors­en on the is­land.

Speak­ing at the launch of World Food Day at Food Hub in Shaw Park, B Yis­rael said, “We have enough food right here to feed us if we don’t waste it. Now, we keep talk­ing about food for ex­port and so forth. The sit­u­a­tion on the is­land right now is one where we ac­tu­al­ly have enough food but we do not nec­es­sar­i­ly have the ap­petite for the food that we have. Be­cause we have enough of the fruits that we pass on and waste all the time, and we have enough of the veg­eta­bles that we pass and we waste all the time and of the flow­ers that are ed­i­ble that we do know we could eat them and have all of those things that are hap­pen­ing around us. But we waste it be­cause we want what­ev­er is on the shelves. But it’s re­al­ly for us to think crit­i­cal­ly about what we have and what we can do with what we have.”

She lament­ed over the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion where the Cabo Star is off ser­vice af­ter a fire in the en­gine room.

“We are in the mid­dle of this in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion woe. It’s on­ly a week and a half fol­low­ing that un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent on the Cabo Star. When you look at our shelves, when you look at what is avail­able for pur­chase, you have to won­der ‘Is it re­al­ly on­ly a week?’ It is re­al­ly less than a month, and this is where we are.”

She urged farm­ers, fish­er­men and oth­ers in­volved in food pro­duc­tion to use this crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion as a chance to re-eval­u­ate their con­tri­bu­tion and worth.

B Yis­rael al­so called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to crit­i­cal­ly re­flect on the is­land’s re­sources and con­sid­er how they can max­imise lo­cal food pro­duc­tion. She said by em­brac­ing this mind­set, To­ba­go can­not on­ly over­come the cur­rent trans­porta­tion hur­dles but al­so build a more re­silient and self-sus­tain­ing fu­ture.

“We will fig­ure out the in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion woe but we need to en­sure that we put our­selves on a foot­ing where that does not both­er us in the fu­ture. If it both­ers us, is be­cause we do not have trans­port to send the food out, not be­cause we don’t have trans­port to bring food in.”