By Raffique Shah
July 05, 2025

I am intrigued by Trade Minister Kama Maharaj’s plan to focus on tourism as one of the main pillars of the new economy. It seems to me that every government that has taken the reins of office over the past 30 years has had tourism in its sights. There is always a promise to woo tourists to this country but they hardly materialise in any significant manner.

I say this not to be critical of tourism as a contributor to the economy of our country. However, there are few countries that have benefited in any significant manner such that they could rely on tourism for improving their foreign exchange earnings and providing jobs that we normally associate with economic growth and social benefits.

Here in the Caribbean, many island-states have successfully attracted tourists in numbers and volumes that contributed to their financial growth, but that still hasn’t managed to raise the standard of living of their people. Put another way, will Trinidadians and Tobagonians be satisfied with the earnings offered by jobs within the tourism sector? Minister Maharaj has successfully led his family’s cosmetic business to international recognition and presumably accompanied by generous earnings. Presumably, too, they pay wages and salaries that are acceptable by their employees.

I have visited and spent time in countries such as Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent, Jamaica and St Maarten. Admittedly, all my travelling was done more than ten years ago before I was stricken with Parkinson’s. I was not satisfied then with much of what I saw of those countries. I have never visited the most successful tourist-based Caribbean countries, namely, the Bahamas and Bermuda, but what I’ve learned about them is also disappointing when matched with our standards of living.

I am not suggesting we ignore tourism which will always offer opportunities to us in the Caribbean. Just the thought of our islands in the sun, surrounded by blue waters of the sea, the lush greenery of tropical rainforests and cultural activities, and our music, especially pan, make it easy for us to market ourselves as a destination.

On Friday as I wrote this column, I heard a radio station broadcasting music by the Mighty Sparrow, who turns 90 soon and who, decades later, remains the Calypso King of the World. Without doubt, he is the greatest calypsonian ever and just listening to hit song after hit song that made him a performer supreme, I thought: this man’s music can market not just Trinidad, but the Caribbean, to the world. The range of his topics, the melodious and catchy tunes, how can anyone resist bobbing a head, tapping a foot, taking a chip or dancing uncontrollably?

I was singing along and thinking how much we pay to market Trinidad and Tobago as two destinations. I was fortunate to have grown up with Sparrow: in 1956 when he exploded like a bomb on the stage with “Jean and Dinah”, I was ten years old. I learned that song and would sing it everywhere I went. I developed, then, a lifelong love for good calypso music and especially Sparrow’s music. I earned the sobriquet, Lord Carlti, and did some composing on the side as a schoolboy. When I met Rosina, I found that she, too, was a Sparrow fan, and that worked to our relationship’s advantage, as our listening pleasures were the same.

Soon, it will be a year that she has gone. I miss her as intensely now as I did the day she departed. I never stopped singing Sparrow’s songs, and other calypsonians’ great hits. But most days I feel like belting out Sparrow’s “Rose” because of its name.

Coming back to Minister Maharaj, I should say that while tourism will always be important to our economy, he should not look at it as a pillar. The population doesn’t know this but in the past, maybe even now, we paid airlines and tour companies for empty seats when they made certain trips between mostly developed countries and T&T. We also pay for expensive advertising in glossy publications. In other words, T&T taxpayers are subsidising airline seats, tour operators and all the fancy advertising.

If we spend such subsidies on making the country’s infrastructure (think pot holes on our roads) better, then tourists and citizens alike will benefit from the spending. The single most important change we must make, that tourists or visitors will appreciate, is to change our attitudes towards productivity, our attitudes towards each other, our attitudes towards obeying the laws of the land, and our bad habits like littering and leaving filth wherever we go. We cannot continue driving like mad people, breaching signals, lights, stopping in the middle of the road to take up passengers and, worst of all, we have completely lost our manners. We are not polite, and we don’t greet people warmly.

Now, who will want to visit a country like that?