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As To­ba­go’s trans­porta­tion woes once again dom­i­nate na­tion­al at­ten­tion, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John has stepped for­ward to de­fend the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the lat­est dis­rup­tions. Her de­fence comes as the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) in­ten­si­fies its call to end what it de­scribes as a decades-long “eco­nom­ic and so­cial em­bar­go” on the is­land caused by what it calls un­re­li­able air and seabridge ser­vices.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the TH­TA ar­gued that chron­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty in in­ter­is­land trans­port has re­peat­ed­ly crip­pled To­ba­go’s tourism-dri­ven econ­o­my, un­der­mined in­vestor con­fi­dence, and erod­ed the qual­i­ty of life for res­i­dents.

“Res­i­dents, work­ers, stu­dents, pa­tients, and vis­i­tors are rou­tine­ly bur­dened by the anx­i­ety of not know­ing whether they can trav­el, re­turn home, at­tend med­ical ap­point­ments, or plan busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty with con­fi­dence. This un­cer­tain­ty erodes qual­i­ty of life, dam­ages in­vestor con­fi­dence, in­creas­es op­er­a­tional costs for tourism busi­ness­es, and sup­press­es eco­nom­ic growth.