Camille McEach­nie

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) An­cil Den­nis is ex­am­in­ing the counter-pro­pos­al put for­ward by To­ba­go hote­liers for the Gov­ern­ment’s dis­tri­b­u­tion of the $50 mil­lion COVID-19 re­lief up­grade grants.

In a state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) praised Den­nis for his in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter, af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion re­ject­ed the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed’s (TTAL) pro­pos­al.

The TH­TA is the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s tourism ex­e­cut­ing agency.

Ac­cord­ing to TH­TA, Den­nis held a vir­tu­al meet­ing with the as­so­ci­a­tion on Mon­day evening to iron out the as­so­ci­a­tion’s main grous­es. They said the fund­ing cri­te­ria were oner­ous and un­fair.

They al­so ques­tioned the le­git­i­ma­cy of hun­dreds of the prop­er­ties list­ed for the grant. They said the TTAL’s fig­ures were flawed.

In­stead, they rec­om­mend­ed sta­tis­tics gen­er­at­ed by the THA Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance.

The as­so­ci­a­tion ar­gued that be­cause the TTAL based the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the grant on flawed sta­tis­tics, the dis­tri­b­u­tion was skewed.

“Dur­ing the meet­ing with Den­nis, the sit­u­a­tion has changed,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the dis­tri­b­u­tion is now based on the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion’s sta­tis­tics and 191 prop­er­ties, not the orig­i­nal 420, will be giv­en the grant fund­ing.

They al­so said the ac­com­mo­da­tion cat­e­gories have been re­vised. Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia, he is analysing the hote­liers’ in­for­ma­tion and hopes to re­solve the mat­ter soon.