EIGHT days after the $1.2 million first phase of the Valencia Visitor Arrival Centre was opened with much fanfare by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, there is very little activity there, TnT Mirror was informed.
It was touted as being opened around the clock, but information reaching Mirror is that it closes on weekends and does not open at nights.
The centre was established to assist visitors through the purchasing of maps, hiring tour guides, and making travel arrangements to visit eco-tourism sites along the north east coast.
Enquiries to the Tourism Development Company and Tourism Minister Dr. Rupert Griffith’s Sangre Grande constituency office confirmed that there is as yet no website up which would inform potential visitors worldwide about the eco-tourism delights that the Matelot to Mayaro stretch on Trinidad’s north east coast.
At the launch of the centre one week ago, the Prime Minister had said her recent visits to Brazil and India would trigger a sharp increase in the 40,000 visitors a year to that coast, primarily to eye-game leatherback and other species of turtles nesting on the beaches.
She said she would be heading to China and South Africa soon and would be heralding the tourism attractions of T&T in those countries.
Before Persad-Bissessar opened the centre on Wednesday, February 2, after arriving at the ceremony almost two hours late, Turtle Village Trust executive director Dr Allan Bachan said the high quality tourism information on offer would trigger a boom in the industry. Instead of staying just overnight, visitors would seriously consider staying for a fortnight, to ensure they sampled all the eco-delights on offer.
Bachan said the second phase was already underway at a cost of $300,000 to provide a children’s playground, gazebos on the bank of the nearby Valencia River for family picnics, a bandstand for public events and food courts where neighbourhood cooks would woo visitors with their “sweethand”.
He said the centre came in on budget and on time in the seven months it had been under construction, but critics of the centre dispute the $1.2 million outlay, saying the Turtle Village Trust did not get value for the money and that it was nothing more than an expensive “shed.”
Griffith is Toco-Sangre Grande MP. A spokesman for the constituency office said a website would soon be up and running.
She said at present visitors who called at the centre would be directed to sites like Valencia and Shark Rivers for bathing, Rincon Bay in Matura and Grande Riviere for turtle nesting, Rio Seco Waterfall in Salybia and another in Balandra as well as the renovated lighthouse at Salybia Beach at the end of Galera Road, Toco.
The six-month turtle-nesting season begins on March 1.
Persad-Bissessar’s late coming was explained later by officials as her not feeling well.
This is so sad……:( Something that cost so much is doing so little right now. The river next to the centre is clearly not safe to use as a liming spot for bathing or cooking. Who can say what is happening up stream??? I can, and it is not safe!!!