Tour operators upset over 24-hour ban on water operations

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Out­side the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park yes­ter­day, the mood was som­bre as tour op­er­a­tors hud­dled to­geth­er talk­ing qui­et­ly about the in­ci­dent that left An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie dead, their boats sit­ting emp­ty an­chored near­by on the wa­ter.

Many of them said they were dis­ap­point­ed that Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had an­nounced a 24-hour ban on all op­er­a­tions. They said reef boats should not pay the price for jet ski op­er­a­tors flout­ing the rules.

Vet­er­an tour op­er­a­tor Melville David said he be­lieves a se­clud­ed spot needs to be des­ig­nat­ed for jet ski ac­tiv­i­ties.

“They should have some bay for them, an area that is not pop­u­lar,” he said.

“That may be the best bet. Any­one who wants to ride on a jet ski should go on that bay, not Pi­geon Point, where it has a lot of fam­i­lies.”

David dis­agreed with the de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a blan­ket ban on the ma­rine park. He said the in­dus­try is so un­pre­dictable that a one-day ban is detri­men­tal to tour op­er­a­tors.

“The sea­son is very short. It is not much busi­ness. In a few days’ time you would not have any­one here,” he said.

Michael Frank, own­er of Frankie Tours, ex­pressed his con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly but echoed David’s sen­ti­ments. He said the in­dus­try em­ploys hun­dreds of peo­ple, in­clud­ing cater­ers, ven­dors and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

“I know of a big group who here for a wed­ding. They have a BBQ to­day and you talk­ing about 130 peo­ple from Nor­way, Swe­den, Den­mark, Hol­land, who on­ly here for one day to do this. They fly in specif­i­cal­ly to do this. Who is foot­ing that bill? They have to be re­fund­ed.”

He be­lieves the in­ci­dent will leave a bad mem­o­ry in the minds of some vis­i­tors who will be forced to leave with­out ful­fill­ing their buck­et list of ac­tiv­i­ties.

He said one op­er­a­tor called him cry­ing, as she had a big tour sched­uled yes­ter­day and would be los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars.

Frank, who has been con­duct­ing tours in To­ba­go for decades, said the au­thor­i­ties need to get stricter in the en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions.

“En­force­ment on­ly comes when some­thing hap­pens. Un­til we take it se­ri­ous­ly all across the board it would con­stant­ly hap­pen,” he said.

He said jet ski op­er­a­tors need bet­ter train­ing be­fore they can go on the wa­ter.

“If you train peo­ple in the cor­rect way, there would be no is­sue of where to go. The sec­ond thing is en­force­ment,” he said.

“Jet ski is a high-risk ma­chine. I ac­tu­al­ly sold all of mines sev­en years ago. It is an im­por­tant part of the tourism but it could have lethal ef­fect.”

Asked why he got out of the busi­ness, he said there was too much neg­li­gence tak­ing place. He re­called mul­ti­ple in­ci­dents in which his jet ski rid­ers crashed in­to oth­er dri­vers, boats and peo­ple. He said he paid the med­ical bills for the in­jured par­ties and did not get the THA in­volved.

“I used to have 17 jet skis at one point in time. You tell them come in for 4 pm, nine o’clock in the night you can’t find them. They gone some­where with some girl. These are the kinds of things that cre­ate prob­lems.”

Mean­while, for­mer mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris said en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions is cru­cial “to en­sure there is or­der in our tourism sec­tor.”

“There should be some uni­for­mi­ty. We have to see tourism as our busi­ness, so there is a lev­el of or­der and safe­ty,” he said.

For­mer To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe said the death had left her with a heavy heart and said it was a sober­ing re­minder about the im­por­tance of safe­ty and vig­i­lance in shared spaces.

The To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion al­so said the in­ci­dent would be dev­as­tat­ing to the tourism in­dus­try and the is­land.