The Min­is­ter of Tourism and the re­cent­ly-ap­point­ed Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) have af­firmed that the dis­burse­ments com­ing from the $50 mil­lion pan­dem­ic re­lief grant to hote­liers will not be wast­ed.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell told of the guide­lines and cri­te­ria that hote­liers would have to meet to ac­cess the grant fund­ing.

“They will put in there some se­ri­ous safe­guards to pre­vent peo­ple from buy­ing a car or pay­ing for their chil­dren’s tu­ition. You know we un­der­stand those things. We know of those ex­pe­ri­ences in the decades past,” Mitchell said.

The grant will be dis­bursed to pro­vide em­ploy­ment and room-stock up­grades to the ho­tels, bed and break­fast re­sorts and oth­er small prop­er­ties.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis, who re­in­forced what Mitchell echoed.

Den­nis said: “We re­main com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the tax­pay­ers dol­lars are utilised ef­fi­cient­ly and, there­fore, a clear pro­ce­dure has been put in place to man­age the dis­burse­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the grant.”

This comes in light of bad in­vest­ments and al­le­ga­tions of fund mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion in To­ba­go.

In 2019, the BG re­port­ed that $32 mil­lion was spent on two prop­er­ties in To­ba­go—Man­ta Lodge and Sanc­tu­ary Re­sort—but it nev­er wel­comed a guest.

In an­oth­er 2019 re­port, for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles al­so ar­gued that there are ho­tels in the in­dus­try los­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

With all of these loss­es on the back of tourism, it begs the ques­tion: is this why the Gov­ern­ment has not re­al­ly put much em­pha­sis and more spend­ing on the tourism in­dus­try?

Of the $3.2 bil­lion in es­ti­mat­ed re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for To­ba­go in 2020, the $392.6 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to tourism, cul­ture and trans­porta­tion ac­counts for 12 per cent. More­over, the cur­rent­ly es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture for trans­fers and sub­si­dies al­lo­cat­ed to To­ba­go Tourism is $274.2 mil­lion—and this while the es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue to be gen­er­at­ed by To­ba­go is $215.7 mil­lion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the new­ly-es­tab­lished To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL) record­ed a net prof­it of $19.5 mil­lion for 2018 and a loss of $1 mil­lion last year.

The TTAL’s mar­ket­ing ex­pens­es for last year was $17.2 mil­lion com­pared to $1.8 mil­lion in 2018.

Mitchell not­ed that he was con­fi­dent that the grant fund­ing would go where it was in­ten­tioned.

When speak­ing of the safe­guards, he said be­cause they are im­ple­ment­ed, many would al­ways com­plain about the slow pace or the bu­reau­cra­cy in­volved in the process.

He ar­tic­u­lat­ed, how­ev­er, “The bu­reau­cra­cy is nec­es­sary be­cause you have to en­sure that the safe­guards are there so that peo­ple don’t just take the mon­ey and fetch it away.”

Den­nis high­light­ed the process of these safe­guards. He said that a tech­ni­cal group com­prised of staff from the TTAL and the di­vi­sion of tourism, cul­ture and trans­porta­tion will in­ter­act with stake­hold­ers and re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions along with a scope of works, proof of op­er­a­tions and oth­er re­quire­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to Den­nis, “An Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee com­pris­ing a cross-sec­tion of THA De­part­ments will eval­u­ate the ap­pli­ca­tions and an in­de­pen­dent au­di­tor will re­view and ver­i­fy works un­der­tak­en by the prop­er­ties as per agree­ment.”

While Den­nis did not want to com­ment on al­le­ga­tions of state funds be­ing used for per­son­al busi­ness with­out ev­i­dence, he said that re­cip­i­ents of the grant would be re­quired to en­ter in­to a le­gal con­tract.

He said that con­tract would stip­u­late that if the funds are not used for the pur­pose for which they have been ap­proved, they are to re­im­burse the amounts in full to TTAL. Mitchell added that there was a sim­i­lar process un­der the Min­istry of Tourism’s Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Pro­gram (TAUP).

TAUP is an in­cen­tive pro­gramme that pro­vides a re­im­bursable grant for ap­proved up­grade work done to ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

The min­is­ter not­ed that af­ter in­spec­tions are done and checks are made, an au­dit­ing firm is hired to re­port on what is done.

He said: “Once those things are not done and some­body takes the mon­ey and they fridge it away, the Min­istry takes le­gal ac­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to the TTAL’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2019—its prod­uct de­vel­op­ment ex­pens­es com­prised main­ly of the TAUP and the T&T Tourism In­dus­try Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TT­TIC).

The TAUP amount­ed to $381,401.38 where­by three ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties re­ceived grants for ap­proved up­grade work done to ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

The TTIC amount­ed to $349,396.29 which main­ly re­flect­ed pay­ment to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards for the pay­ment of the Ser­vice Lev­el Agree­ment for mo­bil­i­sa­tion fees.

Den­nis said that he wel­comes the grant at this time. He re­marked that the com­pet­i­tive­ness of our tourism sec­tor is high­ly de­pen­dent on the qual­i­ty of ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties and the grant would en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, up­grades and en­hanced com­pet­i­tive­ness for the ho­tel sec­tor post-COVID-19.

He said that the pan­dem­ic has giv­en the is­land and in­dus­try an op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­take much-need­ed im­prove­ments.

It al­so gives the hote­liers and re­sort own­ers the abil­i­ty to en­sure that their prop­er­ties ad­here to the vol­un­tary reg­u­la­tions that are in place to en­sure a cer­tain lev­el of qual­i­ty and safe­ty is es­tab­lished at the is­land’s tourism prop­er­ties.