Pigeon Point development

[Roel le Pair]

From Tobago News (Monday, January 16th 2006) we get a positive signal on Pigeon Point's development, interesting to follow up the changes, Steve (W), maybe you could get some inside information next month:

Clean-up of Pigeon Pt
Monday, January 16th 2006 http://www.thetobagonews.com/index.pl/a ... id=5356928

CEPEP Tobago linked up with CEPEP Trinidad last weekend to carry out a massive clean up of the Pigeon Point beach and surrounding areas.

Twenty CEPEP workers from Tobago were joined by ninety of their counterparts from Trinidad in the three-day exercise mounted by the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) in conjunction with the Solid Waste Management Company Limited (SWMCOL). The nearly $.2 million cost of the exercise was shared jointly by the THA and SWMCOL, according to the company's Executive Chairman Ray Braithwaite.

The workers arrived in the island on Friday with their own equipment including two backhoes, two nine-ton dump trucks, five other vehicles, brush cutters, cutlasses, rakes, compost machinery, wheel barrows, forks, shovels, axe, 15 tents, cuts and even a computer to carry out their assignment. They slept and dined in the tents assembled on the spacious grounds near Windhole, while the Assembly supplied meals and entertainment.

When the crew left the Pigeon Point Heritage Park on Monday a large portion of the 60-acre resort took on a new look. They had moved over 50 truckloads of rubbish to the dump at Studley Park and ground up hundreds of pounds more in their compost machines.

Chief Secretary Orville London told the launch of the massive exercise that the Assembly said very little of the condition in which it found Pigeon Point on its purchase in May because it did not consider that relevant. "What is relevant is the state to which we want to bring Pigeon Point. We thought that the best way to do it rather than in tranches is to at least make a significant break through in a short period and recognising that the Trinidad arm of CEPEP had quite a lot of experience in Grenada treating with these massive exercises we decided to enlist their assistance and they would be working in conjunction with us," he said.

[Steve Wooler]

Hi Roel

Thanks for posting that. I was really delighted to see that article in the Tobago News. Of course there's normally a gap of some magnitude between talk and action in Tobago, so I'm not holiding my breath, but fingers crossed they might realise the importance of these things and get their finger out.

According to some of my contacts, Pigeon Point was stripped bare by the outgoing owners before the hand-over to the THA. One contact described it as tantamount to vandalism. The allegation seems to be that they were determined to make it as hard as possible for the THA to get it back to its former glory. Of course it will take many, many years for the trees and shrubs that were hacked down (to give the guards a better over-view of the beach and stop intruders?) to grow back, but at least its a move in the right direction.

Yes, I will most certainly be returning to Pigeon Point Heritage Park during my forthcoming visit. I will also gladly pay my entrance fee in the hope that the money is being used to good purpose and will be ploughed back into returning this beautiful peninsula to its spectacular glory of many years ago.

[Roland Siebenhorn]

Hope they removed also this ugly fence along the shoreline.
Have been there after four years during our visit in December 2005 only once and I was quite shocked!
The situation was unchanged - you still have to wear the wristband and
from what I heard there's still no free access for the fishermen to the area.

Would be interesting to follow the proceed of the "renaturation",
even if I think that it will never be the same as Pigeon Point with
the wooden jetty:

[Mariann G.]

During my visit to Tobago early February we have been a couple of times to Pigeon Point and was shocked to see how badly it looked compared to last year.

But what really shocked me was the treatment me and my friends received from the security guard there. Here is what happened:

One morning we wanted to hire some jet skies, but the guy from whom we usually rent was not there. We have been told that we could find him in Pigeon Point. Given that there were 5 of us and none of us had the intention to stay at Pigeon Point that day (and pay 18 TTs), we decided to take a hike on the beach and go look for the guy. We picked our way up to the jetty, where we met the security guard. We innocently told him that we were just looking for Nathan (the guy with the jet skies) and asked him in a friendly manner if we could go look for him. The words we received in answer I will most certainly not quote here. He even took up his stick and threatened to beat us up if we so much as touched the area that he considered to belong to the club. The trouble was, this meant climbing through a really dangerous area by the jetty full of rocks and rubbish. His attitude immediately brought to mind the incident when a guy was actually shot there...

It greatly saddened us to see that instead of focusing on restoring the place the approach is still the same as it was during the old owners' time.

Needless to say, we avoided Pigeon Point for the rest of our stay.

Mariann