Camille McEach­nie

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val was launched vir­tu­al­ly.

The launch of the event, now cel­e­brat­ing its 34th year, took place on Wednes­day (Ju­ly 28). The event is a cru­cial part of To­ba­go’s cal­en­dar, as it show­cas­es all as­pects of the is­land’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

In bring­ing greet­ings dur­ing the show, To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed’ chair­man Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus said the theme, Re­silient To­ba­go - Re­mem­ber­ing Her Roots with Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, cap­tures how To­bag­o­ni­ans should deal with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“The theme is re­mind­ing us of who we are and that re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances that we have, it is with­in us to bounce back,” she said.

“We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­mem­ber our roots, show ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what our an­ces­tors have done, and un­der­stand that we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve the mem­o­ries and al­so to build on them and fos­ter free­dom and pros­per­i­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

THF­CL CEO John Arnold, who al­so spoke dur­ing the launch, said the fes­ti­val has to be cel­e­brat­ed re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances, as it’s im­por­tant to pre­serv­ing the is­land’s her­itage.

“De­spite the try­ing times of the pan­dem­ic, cer­tain­ly we have to find in­no­v­a­tive ways to still cel­e­brate this fes­ti­val,” Arnold said.

He said pa­trons could look for­ward to see­ing the shows vir­tu­al­ly and can learn to dance, sing and beat African drums at the Her­itage Acad­e­my. Arnold said they can al­so view art dur­ing the Ex­po Art show.

The oth­er of­fer­ings on this year’s her­itage cal­en­dar in­clude the Folk Fi­es­ta, Ms Her­itage Per­son­al­i­ty Show and the Eman­ci­pa­tion Con­cert in the form of a the­atre-like we­bi­nar se­ries.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis chal­lenged To­bag­o­ni­ans to cre­ate year-round fes­ti­vals to be part of the Des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go prod­uct to the world.

This year’s fes­ti­val is ex­pect­ed to run un­til Sep­tem­ber 11, 2021, with a bud­get of $1.5 mil­lion, Arnold told Guardian Me­dia.

The former temporary site for the Scarborough Market at Milford Road, which will now be used for a new farmers’ wholesale market project.

Dad sat­is­fied with mur­der tri­al out­come

Kurt Sa­landy, the fa­ther of mur­der vic­tim Kolen Sa­landy, says he is sat­is­fied with the hang­ing sen­tence passed down to Al­varo Ayres for the 2009 mur­ders of his 16-year-old son and his 15-year-old friend Ron­del Thomas.

The bod­ies of Sa­landy and Thomas were found at French Fort on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2009, af­ter their par­ents re­port­ed them miss­ing.

Al­varo “Josey Wales” Ay­ers was sen­tenced to hang by High Court Judge Althea Alex­is-Wind­sor on Tues­day, af­ter she found him guilty of the dou­ble mur­der at the com­ple­tion of his judge-alone tri­al. Ay­ers was al­lowed to briefly ad­dress the court af­ter the sen­tence and main­tained his in­no­cence.

Speak­ing to To­ba­go To­day, Sa­landy said he was hap­py his son had fi­nal­ly re­ceived jus­tice.

“I’m sat­is­fied with the ver­dict and the sen­tenc­ing as well, it took a while with the ver­dict and that is the as­pect of the jus­tice sys­tem we are not com­fort­able with at this point in time, but nev­er­the­less, be­ing that wheels of jus­tice turn slow­ly, it re­al­ly did de­liv­er for us and with that said, I’m to­tal­ly sat­is­fied with the out­come.”

Ayres, orig­i­nal­ly from Bethel, To­ba­go was ar­rest­ed and charged with the mur­der of the teen boys. Fel­low ac­com­plice Gary Mo­hammed was killed dur­ing a shootout with po­lice in the Moru­ga For­rest in Oc­to­ber 2009.

Sa­landy’s re­mains were first found by a re­li­gious group pray­ing in the area and Thomas’ re­mains were found a short dis­tance away by po­lice while in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­cov­ery of the first body. The bod­ies both bore marks of vi­o­lence to the neck and throat. The au­top­sy re­port re­vealed that Sa­landy suf­fered chop wounds, a frac­tured neck and blunt force trau­ma, while Thomas al­so suf­fered chop wounds, blunt force cer­vi­cal trau­ma and mul­ti­ple neck frac­tures.

To­ba­go To­day was un­able to reach the moth­er of Ron­del Thomas, Ann Thomas, for com­ment.

Pets reck­less­ly aban­doned at an­i­mal shel­ter

The ad­min­is­tra­tor at the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), Jacquie James, is plead­ing with peo­ple to take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pet own­er­ship se­ri­ous­ly. This is due to a re­cent up­surge in peo­ple reck­less­ly aban­don­ing pets at the shel­ter dur­ing the night and when the shel­ter is closed.

James said she sus­pects that peo­ple do this to avoid con­tribut­ing to the shel­ter when they turn over their an­i­mals.

“In many cas­es, what they would do is that they would fling them over the fence, they would tie them to the shel­ter ve­hi­cles, they would put them in the rub­bish hold that we have at the front and then when we come in the morn­ing, we would see an­i­mals just run­ning all over the premis­es,” James said.

With­in re­cent times, James said the prac­tice has be­come preva­lent as sev­er­al peo­ple have lost their jobs and can no longer af­ford to take care of a pet. She said some peo­ple have al­so been re­port­ing that the an­i­mals wan­dered on­to their premis­es and they are hand­ing them over in­stead of “poi­son­ing the an­i­mals.” She said what­ev­er the rea­son is for re­lin­quish­ing own­er­ship, there is a process.

“Come in the shel­ter be­tween 10 am and 4 pm, in­di­cate why you are giv­ing the an­i­mal up be­cause it’s a safe haven re­gard­less. We don’t bash in­di­vid­u­als, if you are un­able to take care of the an­i­mal, you are un­able to take care of the an­i­mal and some peo­ple feel that they have to pay, it’s just a do­na­tion.”

Per­sons can go to the shel­ter and have a con­ver­sa­tion with staff mem­bers about the rea­son for re­lin­quish­ment and sign a form giv­ing up the rights to the an­i­mal, James said. The shel­ter does, how­ev­er, re­quire a do­na­tion for spe­cial pro­ce­dures, in­clud­ing spay­ing neu­ter­ing de­worm­ing and flea treat­ments.

Farm­ers get whole­sale mar­ket

The Di­vi­sion of Food Pro­duc­tion, Forestry and Fish­eries is in the process of set­ting up a whole­sale farm­ers’ mar­ket at the for­mer tem­po­rary mar­ket site at Shaw Park.

This new fa­cil­i­ty pro­pos­es to reg­u­late the sale of pro­duce grown in To­ba­go and stim­u­late the lo­cal econ­o­my. Chair­man of the Farm­ers’ Whole­sale Mar­ket Com­mit­tee, Karen Shaw, said the new ini­tia­tive pro­pos­es to cre­ate an ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial trad­ing space for To­ba­go farm­ers.

“The Farm­ers’ Whole­sale Mar­ket will on­ly car­ry qual­i­ty lo­cal­ly-pro­duced agri­cul­ture pro­duce at vol­umes and prices reg­u­lat­ed by the De­part­ment of Mar­ket­ing,” Shaw said.

The pro­gramme is cur­rent­ly in the reg­is­tra­tion process and meet­ings are be­ing held with farm­ers to de­ter­mine mu­tu­al agree­ment on vol­umes and pric­ing, as well as a start date. Ac­cord­ing to Shaw, reg­is­tered mem­bers will gain sev­er­al ben­e­fits.

“Reg­is­trants will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in the over­all plan­ning process. The de­part­ment will be able to ad­vise farm­ers on what to plant, when to plant and how much to re­duce and mit­i­gate against glut in the sys­tem.”

She said ex­ten­sion of­fi­cers will al­so be as­signed to each farmer to en­sure that they are in sync with the pro­gramme and to al­so mit­i­gate against prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. Farm­ers are al­so be­ing en­cour­aged to ap­ply on­line at the di­vi­sion’s Scar­bor­ough, Shaw Park and Shir­van Of­fices.

The chair­man al­so urged buy­ers, such as ven­dors, green­gro­cers, per­sons in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor and the school feed­ing pro­gramme, to sup­port the Whole­sale Farm­ers’ Mar­ket, as it in­creas­es food pro­duc­tion, which will, in turn, re­duce the food im­port bill, in ad­di­tion to gen­er­at­ing lo­cal busi­ness to dri­ve the lo­cal econ­o­my.