THA unveils harsh penalties for jet ski offenders

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the jet ski ac­ci­dent that claimed the life of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie in Pi­geon Point was no iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent and the stiffer penal­ties be­ing pro­posed for neg­li­gent op­er­a­tors will help to al­le­vi­ate some of the reck­less be­hav­iour that now pre­vails.

At a spe­cial sit­ting at the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said the new To­ba­go Ma­rine Park Bill, which was passed unan­i­mous­ly yes­ter­day, iron­i­cal­ly on the same day An­gel­i­ca would have turned eight years old. An­gel­i­ca was struck and killed on April 8 af­ter a jet ski op­er­a­tor en­tered a bathing-on­ly zone on the pop­u­lar beach.

Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day said the new bill builds on its pre­de­ces­sor but with stricter reg­u­la­tions and stiffer penal­ties.

The fine for unau­tho­rised en­try to the ma­rine park has been raised from $2,500 and/or 12 months’ im­pris­on­ment to $10,000 and 12 months’ im­pris­on­ment.

Any­one caught hunt­ing, killing or tak­ing fau­na, or dam­ag­ing flo­ra will now face a fine of $100,000 and two years’ im­pris­on­ment. The pre­vi­ous bill pun­ished of­fend­ers with a $20,000 fine and/or two years’ im­pris­on­ment.

All oth­er of­fences in the bill car­ry a fine of $20,000, but if of­fend­ers have been con­vict­ed of an of­fence in the pre­ced­ing five years, they will al­so face two years’ jail.

The role of in­spec­tors has al­so been main­tained in the bill to help en­force the reg­u­la­tions. In­spec­tors will have the au­thor­i­ty to stop and search, pow­ers of ar­rest and be able to seize equip­ment.

“That is a big dif­fer­ence be­tween a sign on the beach and law on the wa­ter. Right now, we have signs on the beach, we have pol­i­cy.

“You know what the jet ski op­er­a­tors say­ing among them­selves: ‘The most they could do is talk to we, them can’t do we noth­ing.’ This bill says we can do you some­thing and we will do some­thing.”

Arnold Jo­gie, An­gel­i­ca’s fa­ther, yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia he was pleased to see ac­tion be­ing tak­en to im­prove safe­ty.

To im­prove the pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the in­dus­try, mean­while, Au­gus­tine said all op­er­a­tors in the space must be trained, reg­is­tered and uni­formed. He said the THA will foot the bill for the first set of uni­forms.

He said op­er­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Store Bay, al­so need to im­prove their im­age and stop in­tim­i­dat­ing the pub­lic.

“There must be or­der in the space, it can­not be a free for all.”

Au­gus­tine said the THA has al­so in­stalled booms at Pi­geon Point to re­place the rope des­ig­nat­ing the bathing-on­ly area.

“Since the oil spill, we bought some ex­tra booms and had it in stor­age in the event of an­oth­er oil spill; they are down at Pi­geon Point. The use of the booms will al­low for the de­mar­ca­tion to be more vis­i­ble and make it more dif­fi­cult for jet skis and oth­er crafts to pen­e­trate,” Au­gus­tine said.

List­ing six in­stances of ma­rine ac­ci­dents dat­ing back to 2007, the ma­jor­i­ty of them fa­tal, Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day said “dan­ger has been al­lowed to co­ex­ist with recre­ation” for far too long.

Read­ing from mem­os sent by the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park man­ag­er to its chair­man, Au­gus­tine said jet skis are still op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly at the park and putting bathers at risk.

He said park of­fi­cials com­plained on April 17 and 19 about sight­ings of unau­tho­rised jet skis in the re­strict­ed area.

Au­gus­tine said if the po­lice con­tin­ue to fail to en­force reg­u­la­tions, the THA may have to take le­gal ac­tion.

“It would ap­pear as though the TTPS re­fus­es to en­gage those who are tres­pass­ing—re­fus­es to en­gage. It is at this junc­ture, I want to say if any­one wants to sue the THA over any in­ci­dent there, my in­struc­tion to our lawyers would be to go to court and ask to sue the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and cen­tral gov­ern­ment.”

He said be­cause To­ba­go does not have au­ton­o­my, it is lim­it­ed to set­ting the poli­cies, in­stalling signs and in­form­ing the pub­lic about the reg­u­la­tions.

“You can­not tell me we are cul­pa­ble and we must pay when things go awry.”

He crit­i­cised for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment for not bring­ing the 2020 bill to Par­lia­ment, adding he has been as­sured by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that ac­tion will be tak­en in two to three weeks.