Res­i­dents still strug­gling to re­build their lives af­ter be­ing dis­placed by the new To­ba­go air­port will be get­ting ad­di­tion­al help. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine made the an­nounce­ment on Mon­day as he not­ed many af­fect­ed res­i­dents were not giv­en suf­fi­cient com­pen­sa­tion.

Au­gus­tine said 50 hous­ing units will be pro­vid­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to al­le­vi­ate their chal­lenges. He said these units are catered to "in­di­vid­u­als who could not be re­lo­cat­ed, who weren't paid enough to re­build their homes."

How­ev­er, he said the de­signs for the units are still be­ing com­plet­ed. He said, once fin­ished, he will hold a meet­ing with stake­hold­ers.

Au­gus­tine not­ed the THA al­so pro­vid­ed lands at Shir­van and Cove for re­set­tle­ment at re­duced prices, down from $50 per square foot to $15 per square foot. He said the pol­i­cy was al­so re­vised to pro­vide gen­er­ous pay­ment schemes.

"We al­so pro­ceed­ed to al­low peo­ple to do in­ter-gen­er­a­tional pay­ment struc­tures for pay­ing for the lands. So if you can't fin­ish pay­ing for it, your chil­dren and chil­dren's chil­dren will pay for it."

He added res­i­dents at Shir­van will soon ben­e­fit from per­ma­nent wa­ter con­nec­tions.

Au­gus­tine said he planned to in­vite af­fect­ed res­i­dents to the grand open­ing of the air­port ter­mi­nal.

He said the com­mis­sion­ing will be very soon.

While ex­cit­ed for the new ter­mi­nal to be­come op­er­a­tional, the To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty (TPP) leader said the fa­cil­i­ty alone will not be the panacea to the is­land's tourism sec­tor. He said the ad­min­is­tra­tion is fo­cus­ing heav­i­ly on mar­ket­ing the des­ti­na­tion, al­though its bud­get still pales in com­par­i­son to oth­er re­gion­al neigh­bours. - Stephon Nicholas