DESCRIBING the oil spill in Tobago as “a national emergency,” the Prime Minister says the government will spare no expense to help rehabilitate the island, which is heavily dependent on tourism.
He made the statement on February 11 during a joint news conference with THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine at the Office of the Prime Minister – Central Administrative Services-Tobago, Orange Hill Road, Scarborough.
Dr Rowley, Augustine, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young and Tobago Emergency Management Agency director Allan Stewart had earlier toured several coastal regions in the western part of the island to get a first-hand account of the damage caused by the oil spill.
Several technical officials from various ministries, companies and agencies accompanied the ministerial team.
The spill originated from a mystery vessel – Gulfstream – that was found overturned in the sea some 200 metres off the coast of the Cove Eco Industrial Park around 7.20 am on February 7.
Rowley said nobody could have predicted that an oil spill would have permeated the waters of Tobago and, as such, an occurrence of this nature would not have been budgeted for the THA.
“This is a national emergency and therefore it will have to be funded as an extraordinary expense…You have to find the money and prioritise. So this is priority and we have to respond,” he said.
But Rowley stopped short of giving a potential cost to the rehabilitation effort.
He said the full scope and scale of what is required is still being determined and giving an estimate would be premature at this stage.
But he added, “The central government will have to provide the THA with whatever support the THA needs.”
Rowley said the ministries of works and energy, Heritage Petroleum and the THA, also have their individual budgets.
“So these are extraordinary expenses. But the budgeting process in the Ministry of Finance will take care of it.”
But he noted, “What should be clear to you is that some not so insignificant costs are being incurred just to respond to this incident that we didn’t plan for and that we didn’t expect. But it has happened and we are required to deal with it.”
Saying he was not surprised by the devastation he witnessed, Rowley said oil spills are usually “messy, stressful and expensive.”
[caption id="attachment_1063307" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right, and THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine during a media conference on February 11 in Tobago on the impact of a mysterious oil spill. - Photo courtesy THA[/caption]
But the PM noted he was very impressed by the initiatives that have been implemented so far to contain the spill and clean the shorelines of the affected beaches.
He said, “From mobilising the contingency plan, I would say that everything that needs to be done has been to this point done and is being done and will be done to ameliorate and minimise and eventually eliminate the threat that this poses to us.”
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