Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he has been as­sured that the sub­sidy of flights on the air­bridge will re­main in­tact.

On Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing a pro­pos­al to add two un­sub­sidised ad­di­tion­al flights dai­ly dur­ing peak pe­ri­od. He said Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to roll out morn­ing and evening flights with­out sub­sidy, aimed at eas­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure to op­er­ate the air­bridge and im­prove seat avail­abil­i­ty dur­ing high-de­mand pe­ri­ods

The flights, cur­rent­ly priced at $400 re­turn, would cost be­tween $960 and $1,000 with­out the sub­sidy.

How­ev­er, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day said that pro­pos­al was not dis­cussed at the Cab­i­net lev­el.

Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the THA does not sup­port the re­moval of the sub­sidy, even on ad­di­tion­al flights.

Asked whether he has sought fur­ther dis­cus­sions with Gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy the mixed mes­sages, Au­gus­tine said, “The sta­tus quo re­mains in terms of flights. Some­one didn’t com­mu­ni­cate well or some­thing wasn’t com­mu­ni­cat­ed well, but all con­ver­sa­tions, and dis­cus­sions with the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter were clear — the sub­sidised flights are not go­ing any­where.”

Au­gus­tine had ear­li­er post­ed to so­cial me­dia that he had held dis­cus­sions with the tourism min­is­ter two weeks ago and no men­tion of un­sub­sidised flights were made. He said his po­si­tion re­mains that the do­mes­tic flight is an es­sen­tial pub­lic ser­vice pro­vid­ed by CAL.

Mean­while, for­mer To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe be­lieves the re­moval of the sub­sidy is com­ing un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

“This is a slow yet clever lit­tle plot to even­tu­al­ly to­tal­ly and per­ma­nent­ly take away the en­tire sub­sidy. That would be your every­day norm, pay­ing $1,000 to go be­tween T&T,” Cud­joe said.

How­ev­er, not­ing that move­ment be­tween the is­lands is not a lux­u­ry, she added, “It is not a va­ca­tion route, it is a high­way. This is the high­way stu­dents use to go to Trinidad to get their ed­u­ca­tion. This is the high­way that the sick and el­der­ly utilise to ac­cess very crit­i­cal health­care. This is the high­way en­tre­pre­neurs use to clear their goods in Trinidad and keep the wheels of our econ­o­my run­ning.”

She urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to raise their voic­es on the is­sue.

“Our fu­ture is at stake. Our chil­dren’s fu­ture is at stake.”

Cud­joe said she felt dis­heart­ened to hear Ma­haraj de­scribe the pro­posed $1,000 fee as noth­ing.

“Noth­ing for you!” she said.