Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the is­land re­mains open to ne­go­ti­a­tions with San­dals or any oth­er ma­jor ho­tel brand, but on­ly if they meet the stan­dards set by the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

His com­ments come amid re­newed dis­cus­sions about San­dals po­ten­tial­ly in­vest­ing in To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the open­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he re-ap­proached San­dals’ own­er, ask­ing the com­pa­ny to re­con­sid­er its in­vest­ment af­ter the first deal fell apart. The ini­tial agree­ment faced crit­i­cism for al­leged­ly lack­ing trans­paren­cy and fail­ing to meet en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic ex­pec­ta­tions.