The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) is call­ing for full dis­clo­sure on all the cir­cum­stances which have led to the clo­sure of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI).

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to clear the air on what it says is “con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­ing placed in the pub­lic do­main”.

The COP ar­gues that the tourism sec­tor will be a crit­i­cal area for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in a post-COVID-19 world, and not­ing that many cit­i­zens al­ready de­pend on the sec­tor for their liveli­hoods and ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The text of the COP’s state­ment on the is­sue, fol­lows…

COP STATE­MENT ON TTHTI’S CLO­SURE

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple notes with great con­cern the on­go­ing com­ments both in the main­stream me­dia as well as so­cial me­dia plat­forms con­cern­ing the im­mi­nent clo­sure of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI).

We have ad­vo­cat­ed in the past for Open Gov­ern­ment - Open Da­ta and be­lieve that should such in­for­ma­tion had been re­leased in a time­ly man­ner that the ap­par­ent con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­ing placed in the pub­lic do­main would be eas­i­ly un­der­stood by all cit­i­zens.

See­ing that much in­for­ma­tion is al­ready on the pub­lic do­main we there­fore call for full dis­clo­sure and hon­est and sin­cere dis­cus­sions so as to en­sure that trans­paren­cy is up­held and the care of both stu­dents and aca­d­e­m­ic staff are tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion go­ing for­ward.

While we rec­og­nize that we are in a glob­al fight against an un­seen foe and the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that have come along with it, we be­lieve that we must not on­ly work to­geth­er but al­so re­al­ize that tourism will be one of the pos­si­ble di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion sec­tors that we must pur­sue when we emerge out of this pe­ri­od in­to the new nor­mal.

Let’s put Trinidad and To­ba­go first. Let’s seek the best in­ter­est of our cit­i­zens who ei­ther are de­pend­ing on mak­ing ca­reers in this field or their liveli­hoods from it and be­gin a con­sci­en­tious at­tempt to get­ting it done the right way.