Tour operators support legal action after Angelica’s death

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Some­body must pay for the death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie.

This is the sen­ti­ment of some tour op­er­a­tors in To­ba­go who are back­ing An­gel­i­ca’s fam­i­ly in their law­suit against the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Last week, the Jo­gies sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the THA, the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and the jet ski op­er­a­tor claim­ing neg­li­gence and breach of du­ty in the April 8 fa­tal ac­ci­dent.

The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML stu­dent was en­joy­ing a fam­i­ly va­ca­tion at Pi­geon Point beach when a jet ski struck her and three oth­er rel­a­tives in the bathing-on­ly zone. She was pro­nounced dead at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Arnold Jo­gie, his wife Sal­isha Nar­ine-Jo­gie and their daugh­ter An­geli­na Jo­gie are seek­ing dam­ages for wrong­ful death, pain and suf­fer­ing, loss of earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty, loss of fu­ture earn­ings, loss of ameni­ty and spe­cial dam­ages.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Bon Ac­cord La­goon, Leroy George, CEO of Green To­ba­go Tours, said he 100 per cent en­dorsed the le­gal ac­tion against the THA.

“I am very proud of the fam­i­ly. In this time of grief, it is not easy to go through all the rigours of the ju­di­cial sys­tem,” he said,

How­ev­er, George said the ac­tion was nec­es­sary for clo­sure and scruti­ny of the dan­gers in the in­dus­try.

“The re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is if we do not learn from the mis­takes of the past, we are doomed to re­peat those mis­takes go­ing in­to the fu­ture, and this present THA ad­min­is­tra­tion would have shown in this par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent that they have not learned from the mis­takes of the past.”

George ac­cused the THA and the Her­itage Park man­age­ment of not do­ing its due dili­gence in keep­ing the ma­rine space safe.

“They should have un­der­stood they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure every­thing is main­tained and in place; if an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion hap­pens, there is no am­bi­gu­i­ty.

“A cam­era should have been right there fo­cus­ing on the most im­por­tant area in the Her­itage Park, which is the bathing area, so we know ex­act­ly what is go­ing on.”

George agreed with the pre-ac­tion let­ter that the THA and Her­itage Park should have act­ed soon­er and ad­dressed safe­ty con­cerns at the pop­u­lar beach.

“They did not take enough steps. When you look at the bathing area, the rope you see, the bar­ri­er that you see to­day was not as big and clear to be seen and dif­fi­cult to get over or un­der as it is to­day. It was just a lit­tle piece of rope, one or two inch­es thick.”

Asked whether the THA should set­tle out of court, George said, “No, I want to see change. I want this sit­u­a­tion dis­sect­ed lay­er by lay­er so we can see every­thing that needs to change and make the nec­es­sary changes.”

Tour op­er­a­tor Fred­dy told Guardian Me­dia that su­ing was the cor­rect course of ac­tion.

“I lost a broth­er that was close to me and up to now that killing me, must less ah man’s child. I be­lieve it is the right thing to sue them. I feel they go take it to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and let Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment pay. Some­body has to pay!”

Fred­dy re­called the tem­po­rary ban on jet ski op­er­a­tions in 2011 un­der for­mer tourism sec­re­tary Hilton Sandy.

How­ev­er, he said the lack of en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions left the in­dus­try in chaos af­ter the ban was lift­ed.

“They start to do what they want... If those reg­u­la­tions were in place, this would not have hap­pened.”

How­ev­er, he said wa­ter sports are a pop­u­lar el­e­ment of the tourism pack­age that gen­er­ates for­eign rev­enue.

“These wind surf peo­ple are bring­ing in the most for­eign ex­change. They are not to in­ter­fere with them.

“Mon­ey has to come in. We have to show the world there are things you can do. The place is just to lie down on sun, sea and sand? Does that make sense?”