Tour operators blame THA for fatal Pigeon Point accident

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Reef tour op­er­a­tors and jet ski stake­hold­ers say the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly must ac­cept blame for last month’s fa­tal ac­ci­dent in Pi­geon Point, in which sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie was killed by a jet ski op­er­a­tor while play­ing in a bathing-on­ly zone.

The tragedy has raised na­tion­al con­cern over ma­rine safe­ty, and on April 23, an emer­gency in­junc­tion was grant­ed to the THA ban­ning all jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty at the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park. The in­junc­tion was ex­tend­ed on May 1 by Jus­tice Sher­lanne Pierre.

The new Buc­coo Ma­rine Park Bill has al­so been sent to Par­lia­ment, as the THA seeks to crack down on il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, with hefty fines for in­frac­tions.

How­ev­er, at a meet­ing of stake­hold­ers at the Canaan Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day, tour op­er­a­tors said they feel ne­glect­ed and dis­re­spect­ed, as no THA of­fi­cial showed up. They ap­pealed for prop­er con­sul­ta­tions on the bill, adding that they have com­plained to the THA for years about safe­ty risks at the ma­rine park.

The stake­hold­ers said an alarm was raised about il­le­gal jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing a March 11 meet­ing with As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of Tourism Nike­ta Per­cy.

Min­utes of that meet­ing pro­vid­ed to Guardian Me­dia showed one stake­hold­er high­light­ing im­prop­er de­mar­ca­tion of the park bound­aries con­tribut­ing to jet ski op­er­a­tors ply­ing their trade at the Ny­lon Pool. In ad­di­tion, jet ski in­struc­tor Richard Ash had flagged il­le­gal jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty in the nav­i­ga­tion­al chan­nel pos­ing a risk to bathers.

Yes­ter­day, Ash called on the THA to be held ac­count­able for the April 8 tragedy in­volv­ing Jo­gie, claim­ing they ig­nored stake­hold­ers’ warn­ings.

He said, “Every time I stand up I say­ing the same thing. It is go­ing to hap­pen—and it hap­pened...” Ash said.

“Why did it take the THA so long (to act)? A jet ski could move over 85 miles per hour on the wa­ter. It has no brakes... The risk of col­li­sion could oc­cur. You don’t put the hard by a soft. The jet ski is the hard, the hu­man is the soft... I knew it was go­ing to hap­pen.”

He added, “Some­body has to be held to ac­count and the House of As­sem­bly has to be hold to ac­count, be­cause they had all the warn­ings.”

Michael Frank, own­er of Frankie Tours, said he was fed up of the ex­cus­es from the THA, which he said is not lead­ing by ex­am­ple.

“THA al­ways seems to have prob­lems with every­thing. When it is not fu­el, it is trans­porta­tion. I used to be a reef pa­trol of­fi­cer. I work in the sys­tem, so I know. In or­der for you to have prop­er op­er­a­tions, you need to have prop­er things in place. You can’t come out and say you not do­ing A, B, C, and you at the top is not do­ing any­thing to fa­cil­i­tate A, B, C.”

He said if tour op­er­a­tors want to op­er­ate un­til about 10 pm, the THA does not have ad­e­quate as­sets to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty. He claimed there are al­so no am­bu­lance ser­vices or med­ical per­son­nel to re­spond to po­ten­tial emer­gen­cies.

Frank said the ma­rine park needs prop­er sur­veil­lance to pro­tect against poach­ers and peo­ple en­dan­ger­ing the reef. He be­lieves glass-bot­tom boats are al­so un­fair­ly pay­ing the price for all ma­rine ac­ci­dents in To­ba­go.

“A shark bite some­body in Tur­tle Beach, Buc­coo Reef is closed.”

He added, “Con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly that lost their child... but it is not need­ed to close down the liveli­hood of thou­sands of peo­ple.”

Mean­while, Alvin Dou­glas, di­rec­tor, To­ba­go Ma­rine Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices, said his com­pa­ny was hired by the THA to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ty on the reef and en­sure com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions. How­ev­er, he said in 2023, their ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed.

“We would have mon­i­tored the boats, how many per­sons on­board, mak­ing sure they don’t over­load the ves­sels. We would have re­mind­ed peo­ple that fish­ing (in the ma­rine park) is il­le­gal,” he said.

Dou­glas said the com­pa­ny was al­so re­spon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing jet ski op­er­a­tions.

“When we re­alise jet skis (are on the reef), we would ush­er them out of the reef in­to an area they could ply their trade. There was a work­ing sys­tem and it was stopped. I can’t tell you why it was stopped. Every­thing just start­ed to fall from there.”

PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis was re­port­ed­ly asked by the tour op­er­a­tors to arrange the meet­ing on their be­half. She urged the op­er­a­tors to con­tin­ue to write the THA and re­quest di­a­logue. She claimed the THA ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the in­vi­ta­tion on Mon­day.

How­ev­er, the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary said an in­for­mal no­tice of the meet­ing was on­ly re­ceived yes­ter­day evening. It said the con­cerns out­lined in the let­ter were al­ready ad­dressed at an April 13 meet­ing in Pi­geon Point.

Mean­while, Sec­re­tary of En­vi­ron­ment Dar­ren Hen­ry told Guardian Me­dia that he has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly since as­sum­ing of­fice three months ago to im­prove the in­dus­try. He said he at­tend­ed the April 13 meet­ing and stake­hold­ers had ad­vised the THA that the time for talk was over. He said he was sur­prised to see that now that the THA has de­cid­ed to act, stake­hold­ers are in­ter­est­ed in talk­ing.