Farley: Tobago safe despite marine accidents

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the is­land re­mains a safe tourist des­ti­na­tion, de­spite an­oth­er ma­rine ac­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point beach.

Two boats col­lid­ed around 5.43 pm on Sun­day, leav­ing nine peo­ple, in­clud­ing four for­eign­ers, in­jured. Five vic­tims re­main hos­pi­talised, with two be­ing trans­ferred to Trinidad for surg­eries. The in­ci­dent comes five months af­ter sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie was struck and killed by a jet ski while bathing at Pi­geon Point beach.

Au­gus­tine de­scribed the lat­est in­ci­dent as un­for­tu­nate, but ar­gued the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) over­sight re­mains lim­it­ed legal­ly.

He said the THA has seen the strong pub­lic re­ac­tion and will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate firm­ly for leg­is­la­tion to man­age the ma­rine park ef­fec­tive­ly.

“I want you to know that To­ba­go re­mains ex­treme­ly safe. I want you to know the THA does not sup­port a free-for-all at all,” he said.

He said THA has im­ple­ment­ed poli­cies since it was pre­vi­ous­ly sued over a 2008 boat­ing ac­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point.

“We put up the signs, we’ve been warn­ing peo­ple, we’ve been pub­licly talk­ing about it, but be­cause the THA does not have law-mak­ing func­tions, the truth is the po­lice does not re­spond on our pol­i­cy to ac­tu­al­ly hold peo­ple to ac­count.”

He said there are many in­stances where Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park man­age­ment flagged un­safe ac­tiv­i­ty at the park, but there was no re­sponse from au­thor­i­ties.

“We have to de­pend on oth­er agen­cies of state who are not al­ways will­ing to sup­port or some­time they don’t have the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port, in­clud­ing Coast Guard, who might tell yuh they have no boat, which is a nor­mal thing.”

On the de­lay in pas­sage of the To­ba­go Ma­rine Park Bill, passed by the THA in April, Au­gus­tine said it was sent to Par­lia­ment just be­fore its Ju­ly re­cess.

“It will come up in this first quar­ter in the Par­lia­ment. Once that is passed, then we would have the le­gal teeth to po­lice the very poli­cies that we have.”

Au­gus­tine not­ed, how­ev­er, that stake­hold­ers al­so bear a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to up­hold the reg­u­la­tions, as state agen­cies can­not pre­vent in­di­vid­u­als from act­ing reck­less­ly.

“When I stress that we have to fol­low rules down there, there is a par­tic­u­lar vil­lage id­iot say­ing to ig­nore the THA pol­i­cy, do what yuh want.”

He warned stake­hold­ers, “Yuh do­ing yuh own a dis­ser­vice. Yuh mash­ing up your own in­dus­try.”

He said the THA will con­tin­ue to as­sist the af­fect­ed vic­tims and praised the emer­gency re­sponse from au­thor­i­ties. The health sec­tor has been com­mend­ed by Dr Ian Ram­nar­ine, chief sur­geon, Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, who just hap­pened to be on the beach at the time of the in­ci­dent. Ram­nar­ine said life­guards and med­ical per­son­nel re­spond­ed ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly to the mass-ca­su­al­ty event. Ac­ci­dent vic­tim Mas­si Sanchez was al­so high in praise for the res­cue re­sponse as well as the med­ical care at Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal.