Hours be­fore a sched­uled meet­ing with San­dals Re­sorts own­er Adam Stew­art, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Far­ley Au­gus­tine, made it clear: if San­dals is se­ri­ous about rein­vest­ing in To­ba­go, the lux­u­ry ho­tel chain must bring its own mon­ey.

“Come with your own US dol­lars, in­vest here, and do it on terms that re­spect the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Au­gus­tine made the state­ment dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing last night, as San­dals looks to rein­tro­duce its pro­pos­al for the is­land. He ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the cen­tral gov­ern­ment’s lack of sup­port for To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor.

“I want to say that the de­vel­op­men­tal in­tru­sion project prod­uct can­not be just build­ing a ho­tel ei­ther.”

While Au­gus­tine em­pha­sized that he has no is­sue with San­dals, he re­mind­ed sup­port­ers that the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al from the com­pa­ny was pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed by To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“Let me be clear—I have no is­sue with San­dals. And I said, cher­ry-pick­ing some things from a state­ment go­ing back to prob­a­bly 2017 or 2018, when To­bag­o­ni­ans, right­ful­ly, re­ject­ed the San­dals pro­pos­al that was on the ta­ble. It is not be­ing re­ject­ed now—To­bag­o­ni­ans re­ject­ed it.”

He point­ed out that the pre­vi­ous plan lacked mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with the is­land’s res­i­dents.

“That is what was sup­posed to hap­pen. And per­haps you for­get that San­dals wasn’t com­ing here to spend its own mon­ey. San­dals was com­ing here to spend the tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey from Trinidad and To­ba­go. That was the mod­el.”

He added:

“So the is­sue isn’t even San­dals. We could get San­dals, we could get Four Sea­sons, we could get Man­darin—you name it. We would wel­come any lux­u­ry brand. But it must align with what the peo­ple of To­ba­go want.”

“It must be a case where To­bag­o­ni­ans win. And once To­bag­o­ni­ans will ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit from the arrange­ment, I have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem cham­pi­oning that. In fact, I’ll be the first one in front to do so.”

Au­gus­tine al­so drew com­par­isons to San­dals’ in­vest­ment mod­el in St. Vin­cent, re­it­er­at­ing that To­ba­go de­serves the same treat­ment—with San­dals fund­ing the de­vel­op­ment them­selves.

He touched on the le­gal as­pect of tourism de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go, as­sert­ing that the THA, as the body re­spon­si­ble for the sec­tor, should lead ne­go­ti­a­tions with in­vestors—in­clud­ing the up­com­ing meet­ing with San­dals.

“Tourism is a func­tion of the THA. It’s about fol­low­ing the law, not about Far­ley want­i­ng to lead,” he said.

Au­gus­tine al­so crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to fund key in­fra­struc­ture projects in To­ba­go, in­clud­ing a ma­ri­na and port re­de­vel­op­ment.

“No mon­ey has been sent to To­ba­go for these projects. And when the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter tells you the on­ly de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go is the Mar­riott Ho­tel, that’s when you know he doesn’t love you as a To­bag­on­ian,” he said.

Talks of re­newed San­dals in­vest­ment in To­ba­go resur­faced last month af­ter for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced—dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal—that he had con­vinced the re­sort chain to re­con­sid­er its in­ter­est.

Row­ley said his on­ly re­gret as Prime Min­is­ter was not se­cur­ing a San­dals re­sort for To­ba­go and ex­pressed hope it could still hap­pen be­fore he leaves of­fice. He al­so called on Au­gus­tine and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke to en­gage in mak­ing the deal a re­al­i­ty.

The San­dals To­ba­go project was ini­tial­ly an­nounced in 2017 by Row­ley as a ma­jor tourism ini­tia­tive aimed at boost­ing the is­land’s econ­o­my. The plan in­volved build­ing a re­sort on prime beach­front land at Buc­coo and Gold­en Grove, with promis­es of job cre­ation and in­creased in­ter­na­tion­al tourism.

How­ev­er, the project faced swift back­lash over en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, land ac­qui­si­tion dis­putes, and al­le­ga­tions of in­suf­fi­cient trans­paren­cy. In 2019, San­dals with­drew from the deal, cit­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty and a con­tentious po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.