Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A po­lit­i­cal clash is brew­ing be­tween Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal leader and for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), over a claim by Row­ley that the first in­voice for the oil spill dis­as­ter last year, in­clud­ed a re­quest for two ve­hi­cles.

Row­ley has threat­ened to re­lease the ev­i­dence if he is ac­cused of ly­ing but the THA has charged back, call­ing his sto­ry fab­ri­cat­ed and dared him to do so.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Good­wood Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day night, Row­ley said the THA ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed help from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment when the oil spill oc­curred.

“When that boat cap­sized with the oil, and the oil ap­peared in Scar­bor­ough and was threat­en­ing to fol­low the coast­line, and he start­ed to take over the coast­line, the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and the staff at the Min­istry of En­er­gy com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the THA. They said ‘that is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. All yuh stay out of it’, that was the ini­tial re­ac­tion,” Row­ley told the au­di­ence.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to step in to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age to To­ba­go’s en­vi­ron­ment.

“When the min­is­ter told me that, I said, ‘Well, you catch your­self to To­ba­go, and you let them know and put them on the record that the cen­tral gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.’ By that time, the oil wash­ing Low­lands, and that is when the min­istry came in and took all the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fund­ing that project,” he said.

But Row­ley claimed what came next shocked him.

“When the first bill came from them, you wouldn’t be­lieve the first bill that they put in, be­cause the Gov­ern­ment said the cen­tral gov­ern­ment will pay. The bill came in and on the bill was two Pra­dos. They want two Pra­dos.”

He added, “You know, y’all can laugh. But this is not fun­ny. So when you hear them go­ing up and down and play­ing, you all have no idea how child­ish and fool­ish these peo­ple are. Two Pra­dos, and they will come and tell you to­mor­row that I lie. If they on­ly say I lie, I will ask the min­is­ter to pro­duce their sub­mis­sion ... You are go­ing to clean up oil on the rock at Cove, how the hell two Par­dos get on the bill?”

Row­ley warned To­bag­o­ni­ans not to be mis­led by claims that the THA is not sup­port­ed by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

He said, “That is what you all are fac­ing. I am Prime Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for To­ba­go un­der the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause I am the one hav­ing to an­swer in the par­lia­ment for To­ba­go.”

He claimed the oil spill was used to play pol­i­tics while pre­tend­ing to re­ject help, on­ly to turn around and make ex­trav­a­gant re­quests at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, THA Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts de­nied Row­ley’s claim that the as­sem­bly re­quest­ed two Pra­dos in its oil spill fund­ing re­quest.

Call­ing the state­ment “a cal­cu­lat­ed lie,” she said the THA sub­mit­ted a mid-term re­quest for $300 mil­lion, in­clud­ing $153.5 mil­lion for oil spill cleanup, con­trac­tor pay­ments, and over­draft in­ter­est due to de­layed cen­tral gov­ern­ment fund­ing. She said on­ly $50 mil­lion was re­ceived to cov­er Feb­ru­ary and March.

Roberts ac­cused Row­ley of us­ing “shame­less, fla­grant dis­hon­esty” and dared him to “pro­duce the ev­i­dence” if his claim is true, warn­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans are “watch­ing and lis­ten­ing.”

On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, an over­turned barge, Gulf­stream, was dis­cov­ered leak­ing oil off the coast of Cove, trig­ger­ing a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter for the is­land.

By Feb­ru­ary 9, oil had reached coastal ar­eas, in­clud­ing Scar­bor­ough and Low­lands. Hours af­ter the dis­cov­ery, the THA de­clared a Lev­el 3 dis­as­ter and na­tion­al agen­cies were ac­ti­vat­ed. Cleanup op­er­a­tions be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly, with con­tain­ment equip­ment de­ployed. Au­gus­tine re­quest­ed $153 mil­lion to cov­er ini­tial ex­pens­es from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, which lat­er re­leased $50 mil­lion to cov­er costs for Feb­ru­ary and March.