The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is plan­ning to es­tab­lish an An­tiq­ui­ties Unit to more ef­fec­tive­ly use To­ba­go’s ar­chae­o­log­i­cal arte­facts as part of its tourism prod­uct, af­ter find­ing that peo­ple have been steal­ing arte­facts ei­ther to sell or use in their homes.

Some have even turned old, his­toric sug­ar boil­ing pots in­to plant pots in their yards.

“We have a few in­dis­crim­i­nate and in­con­sid­er­ate cit­i­zens pil­fer­ing and trad­ing arte­facts from across the is­land. In­di­vid­u­als have stolen arte­facts from State lands and pri­vate hold­ings, and have tak­en these arte­facts in­to their homes and even ex­port­ed some,” THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said as he pre­sent­ed the is­land’s $3.97 bil­lion Bud­get on Thurs­day.

He added that some have har­vest­ed the arte­facts and sold them as scrap iron.

“Oth­ers have repo­si­tioned arte­facts to their own yards and used arte­facts, such as the large cop­per pots once used to boil sug­ar cane juice to plant flow­ers and adorn them­selves, there­by rob­bing the pop­u­la­tion of ac­cess to part of their his­to­ry,” he con­tin­ued.

Au­gus­tine said in fis­cal 2023, the An­tiq­ui­ties De­part­ment will re­ha­bil­i­tate and re­fur­bish var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sites, in­clu­sive of the Spey­side Wa­ter­wheel, Rox­bor­ough Co­coa House and the Ca­noe Bay Sug­ar Mills among oth­ers, to more for­mal­ly in­te­grate them in­to the is­land’s tourism prod­uct.

The de­part­ment will al­so de­vel­op an An­tiq­ui­ties Reg­istry Sys­tem that will more ac­cu­rate­ly keep check of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal as­sets.

“Giv­en that To­ba­go has had a more sto­ried past than most oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, there is an ur­gent need to have an As­sem­bly Bill sent down to par­lia­ment to have leg­is­la­tion en­act­ed to pro­tect the is­land’s arte­facts,” Au­gus­tine said.

He added that the THA will ex­plore hav­ing ar­chae­ol­o­gists and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in con­trolled/au­tho­rised digs.

Au­gus­tine added that in the long run, To­ba­go will have to in­vest in cli­mate-con­trolled fa­cil­i­ties and ap­pro­pri­ate spaces to house arte­facts and his­tor­i­cal records on the is­land.