Airbridge subsidy removal proposal upsets Farley

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he is not in sup­port of a re­port­ed pro­pos­al by Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to re­move the sub­sidy on the air­bridge.

Au­gus­tine made the com­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive which re­vealed the sub­sidy re­moval was part of rec­om­men­da­tions the CAL board had made to Gov­ern­ment as part of a bil­lion-dol­lar bailout plan it is seek­ing. The CAL board is al­so propos­ing a fu­el sur­charge and the ax­ing of low-rev­enue routes.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view dur­ing Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions at Bap­tist Grounds, Sig­nal Hill, Au­gus­tine said he on­ly learned of the re­port through the Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle, but said it has left him trou­bled, adding he wants to see the pro­pos­als for him­self.

He not­ed there were no ve­he­ment ob­jec­tions from him to the in­crease in the roundtrip do­mes­tic fare from $300 to $400 in Jan­u­ary 2023, but hint­ed that he would not sup­port any ad­di­tion­al bur­den on cit­i­zens ac­cess­ing es­sen­tial pub­lic trans­port.

“My po­si­tion is that CAL just needs to be more ef­fi­cient,” Au­gus­tine said.

“I find it par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that CAL ser­vices every­where else in the re­gion ex­cept To­ba­go prop­er­ly when it comes to ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al flights, but they ain’t mak­ing mon­ey. If the tax­pay­ers must sub­sidise CAL, pay when CAL can’t make mon­ey, then the first call of du­ty should be on the cit­i­zens of T&T. That is cer­tain­ly some­thing I will put in­to the con­ver­sa­tion.”

He re­called a pro­pos­al in the past for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers to pay the true do­mes­tic fare, spec­u­lat­ed to be $1,000 re­turn by for­mer T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion chair­man Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, while on­ly T&T cit­i­zens who re­side here re­ceive the sub­sidised price. He said the is­sue “is a con­cern for all To­bag­o­ni­ans.”

Asked whether ad­di­tion­al cost to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers may dis­suade them from com­ing to To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine said the idea is not nov­el.

“The more I think of it, the more I re­alise that suc­ces­sive CAL boards have tried to get suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to re­move the sub­sidy.”

How­ev­er, he said any ma­jor change would re­quire con­sul­ta­tion from var­i­ous sec­tors.

On that note, Au­gus­tine said the sit­u­a­tion high­lights the press­ing need for To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

“I will give you one sim­ple ex­am­ple. If you make an ap­pli­ca­tion now for Town and Coun­try Plan­ning and you need to ap­peal it, you have to find your­self in Trinidad to get it done. The av­er­age Tri­ni will just catch a bus or a car. When I tell you it is un­fair — it is patent­ly un­fair. It is an his­tor­i­cal in­jus­tice we ought to cor­rect.”

He said To­bag­o­ni­ans are forced to pay more and trav­el fur­ther to ac­cess the same ser­vice as their Tri­ni coun­ter­parts.

“There are prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions for To­ba­go not hav­ing that au­ton­o­my. Things my Tri­ni friends and fam­i­ly take for grant­ed at the drop of a hat, it re­quires from us a lot more. That is why the push for au­ton­o­my is be­ing ex­pe­dit­ed as we speak.”

He said he plans to speak to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to seek clar­i­ty on the sit­u­a­tion.