Shas­tri Boodan

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

A tour op­er­a­tor is call­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Sail­Clear elec­tron­ic cus­toms pro­gramme, say­ing it would in­crease yacht ar­rivals and give a sig­nif­i­cant boost to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing events like Di­vali.

The call was made by Jesse James, who is al­so the Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent. At the time, he was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia while host­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al group of yacht vis­i­tors at the Shiv Shankar Mandir in Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas, where they were treat­ed to Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions and an in­tro­duc­tion to lo­cal cul­ture.

James, who has been bring­ing yacht vis­i­tors to Fe­lic­i­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence Di­vali for the past 30 years, said this year’s ex­cur­sion at­tract­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 vis­i­tors from Ger­many, Fin­land, the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Eng­land. Many were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the Hin­du fes­ti­val for the first time.

 “We’re here to ex­pe­ri­ence Di­vali in Fe­lic­i­ty and have a beau­ti­ful time,” he said.

James said the vis­i­tors were look­ing for­ward to sam­pling lo­cal cui­sine, watch­ing cul­tur­al per­for­mances and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.

James said he had ob­served an im­prove­ment in the lev­el of in­ter­est in the Di­vali ex­cur­sion this year and re­mained op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture of tourism in T&T.

On the Sail­Clear ini­tia­tive, James said, “I am re­al­ly en­cour­aged at what the present Gov­ern­ment is do­ing un­der the lead­er­ship of the Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism.”

He de­scribed Sail­Clear as an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment that would make it eas­i­er for yacht op­er­a­tors to vis­it T&T.

The elec­tron­ic plat­form al­lows yacht and plea­sure craft op­er­a­tors to sub­mit cus­toms de­c­la­ra­tions and ar­rival no­ti­fi­ca­tions on­line be­fore reach­ing a par­tic­i­pat­ing des­ti­na­tion. James said the sys­tem would elim­i­nate much of the pa­per­work cur­rent­ly re­quired of vis­it­ing yachties, who tra­di­tion­al­ly have to com­plete nu­mer­ous doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing car­bon-copy forms.

“This bu­reau­cra­cy that has been ex­ist­ing for so many years, since the days of drag­ons fly­ing around in Trinidad, is fi­nal­ly com­ing to an end with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Sail­Clear,” he said.

He pre­dict­ed that the ini­tia­tive could sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease yacht ar­rivals and vis­i­tor num­bers. He said the yacht­ing in­dus­try could gen­er­ate con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits through em­ploy­ment, for­eign ex­change earn­ings and in­creased spend­ing by vis­i­tors.

“It’s just go­ing to in­crease the amount of vis­i­tors com­ing to the is­land, in­to Ch­aguara­mas, and again, that in­dus­try on­ly brings in noth­ing but pos­i­tive things for Trinidad, and skilled em­ploy­ment, for­eign ex­change, which the coun­try so des­per­ate­ly needs,” James said.

Mean­while, Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions in Fe­lic­i­ty con­tin­ued af­ter dark, with res­i­dents trans­form­ing sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty in­to a spec­tac­u­lar dis­play of lights.

 A se­ries of il­lu­mi­nat­ed arch­es stretched for miles along Pierre Road, Ca­can­dee Road and Pe­ters Field, at­tract­ing mo­torists and vis­i­tors.

Traf­fic was reg­u­lat­ed through a one-way sys­tem co­or­di­nat­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers and traf­fic war­dens, al­low­ing vis­i­tors to move through the com­mu­ni­ty.

While many res­i­dents opt­ed for colour­ful elec­tric light­ing, oth­ers main­tained the tra­di­tion­al Di­vali prac­tice of light­ing deyas out­side their homes.

The cel­e­bra­tions al­so fea­tured sev­er­al satir­i­cal dis­plays, in­clud­ing bobolees de­pict­ing an MP, a may­or and a coun­cil­lor. How­ev­er, no iden­ti­ties were at­tached to the fig­ures. A mock-up of a CNC3 cam­era­man was al­so among the dis­plays.