Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is in­vest­ing $10 mil­lion to trans­form To­ba­go’s new ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal in­to a mod­ern gate­way show­cas­ing the is­land’s cul­ture, af­ter re­ceiv­ing no fund­ing from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to out­fit the fa­cil­i­ty’s in­te­ri­or.

Dur­ing the THA bud­get de­bate on Thurs­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance has re­leased funds to­wards this ini­tia­tive.

Au­gus­tine said the THA is us­ing its au­thor­i­ty un­der the Fifth Sched­ule of the THA Act, with sup­port from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our.

“We are do­ing the build­out in­side the ter­mi­nal to en­sure we have the best first im­pres­sions of To­ba­go,” he said.

The ful­ly cer­ti­fied ter­mi­nal build­ing was of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty on June 14.

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said, “The cur­rent air­port is just blank; it is just emp­ty. It is a beau­ti­ful shell. It can open this very minute, but it will be noth­ing in there to buy.

“The mi­cro en­ter­pris­es like those sell­ing benne ball and tamarind have nowhere to sell, be­cause it is just a blank space with plugs.”

The THA had re­quest­ed funds from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for out­fit­ting the ter­mi­nal in the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, but none were al­lo­cat­ed.

Au­gus­tine’s pre­sen­ta­tion on Thurs­day in­clud­ed ren­der­ings of the new ter­mi­nal with tarot leaves dec­o­rat­ing the mar­ket­place where small ven­dors will ply their trade. A To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd of­fice will al­so be lo­cat­ed in the vicin­i­ty.

He said the do­mes­tic lounge will be themed af­ter the Buc­coo Reef while the main check-in area will re­flect To­ba­go’s rich her­itage.

“The THA is do­ing all of this. We in­vest­ing in our tourism prod­uct.

“We can’t tell peo­ple come to this place, and when they come, it looks ‘cab­ba cab­ba’. When yuh come, the place must look de­cent and prop­er.”

He said a des­ig­nat­ed taxi ser­vice area will en­cour­age friend­ly in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic, adding that cus­tomer ser­vice must im­prove.

Mean­while, Za­k­our met stake­hold­ers from the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day to dis­cuss im­prov­ing do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.