THA confirms pending departure of US troops but mum on date

STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The ex­it date for US troops now in To­ba­go is be­ing treat­ed as a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue.

This as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Youth Em­pow­er­ment and Sport Keigon De­noon re­it­er­at­ed a state­ment by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine that the US mil­i­tary would be leav­ing the is­land with­in days, but re­fused to give the ex­act date.

“Be­cause that is a sen­si­tive is­sue in terms of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and so on, the ex­act time­line would not be giv­en, but they would be leav­ing short­ly,” De­noon said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Ho­choy Charles Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, Calder Hall.

The US troops have main­tained a con­sis­tent pres­ence in To­ba­go since ar­riv­ing last No­vem­ber to in­stall a mil­i­tary-grade Ground/Air Task-Ori­ent­ed Radar (GATOR) radar at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point.

Last Wednes­day, Au­gus­tine con­firmed a heavy pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel at the Grafton Beach Re­sort. How­ev­er, he de­nied there was any re­stric­tions on ac­cess to the ho­tel in Black Rock. Guardian Me­dia was in­formed by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at the ho­tel’s en­trance on March 10 that the fa­cil­i­ty was ful­ly booked for a spe­cif­ic group and en­try would on­ly be per­mis­si­ble for guests.

De­noon, the elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant, was al­so asked whether To­ba­go has ben­e­fit­ed from host­ing the radar.

On March 2, a 29-foot fish­ing ves­sel, com­mis­sioned by a UK na­tion­al, left Buc­coo en route to Union Is­land, St Vin­cent. How­ev­er, nei­ther boat nor crew has been seen since.

The radar sys­tem, es­ti­mat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to cost US$3 mil­lion per day to op­er­ate, has been tout­ed by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to be far su­pe­ri­or to the radars pre­vi­ous­ly used by TT.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence last month, Sturge said, “The radar sys­tem pro­vid­ed by the US, they work with drone tech­nol­o­gy and satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions and so on. So that it of­fers a lot more than what we have. And that is need­ed at this point in time to achieve cer­tain ob­jec­tives, be­cause as you would ap­pre­ci­ate, the fleet, the Coast Guard’s fleet, is not what it should be. So, that we need the as­sis­tance, in terms of de­tec­tion, which would help us with the lim­it­ed fleet we have, it will help us to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner and in­ter­cept.”

Yes­ter­day, De­noon said the US radar was not the ide­al sys­tem to help track the miss­ing boat’s last co-or­di­nates.

“As it per­tains to the ves­sel, that speaks to a big­ger is­sue as it per­tains to ma­rine safe­ty. What we have to en­sure is all the fish­er­folk and the per­sons that use the fa­cil­i­ty have the nec­es­sary GPS struc­tures im­ple­ment­ed in their ves­sels. So in these in­stances where per­sons are miss­ing they can be eas­i­ly found.

“I don’t think the radar would be the best tool to utilise in that in­stance, What we would best want to use is to have all of those ves­sels, es­pe­cial­ly those that do long-dis­tance runs, to be tagged and have any over­see­ing body, like you have the Air Traf­fic As­so­ci­a­tion, to be able to track the ves­sels and en­sure the safe­ty of To­bag­o­ni­ans are our num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty.

De­noon said he could not say whether the radar was used at all to try to find the boat.

“I am not sure if it has not been used. What I can do is find out that in­for­ma­tion and get back to you at our next press con­fer­ence.”

Ef­forts to con­tact All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion head Cur­tis Dou­glas and Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea gen­er­al sec­re­tary Gary Aboud for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.