The Tourist Board to DMO

#TurksandCaicos, April 17, 2023 – Imagine everything that you have worked hard to establish and build being taken away from you without reason or explanation, and the persons dispossessing you of what you have worked tirelessly to build, and is rightfully yours, are the persons you have elected as your leaders, the people charged with the responsibility to protect the very things that you have worked to build as a native people, imagine your own government choosing others over you, this is our reality as Turks and Caicos Islanders under this PNP administration.

Unfortunately, in this contemporary era, in the year of our lord 2023 , our very own elected leaders, primarily the Premier, his Minister of Tourism and this PNP administration has without an iota of substantive reasoning taken the Tourist Board out of local Turks and Caicos Islanders’ management.  In an era when Turks and Caicos Islanders has never been more educated, more qualified, and more capable of ushering the tourism sector in The Turks and Caicos Islands into the regional juggernaut that it is, and can become, under their guidance, our government is boldly telling them they are not capable, despite them proving that they are repeatedly.

Since its inception, the Tourist Board has demonstrated, under the leadership of several indigenous directors, that they have what it takes to move the needle on tourism in our country in a substantive and meaningful way, the arrival numbers boldly substantiate this statement.  So, one must ask why is this happening, and why aren’t the elected PNP members speaking out against this regressive move? Not only is this change an insult to our more than capable staff of the former Tourist Board, but it is also an insult to this entire country to transition to a DMO and hire or seriously consider hiring persons from competing markets to manage our Tourism Industry, this simply cannot be a reality.

Secondly, has this administration seriously considered the consequences of making Turks and Caicos Islanders redundant and jobless in this economic climate, where inflation and the cost of living is at an all-time high, whilst seeking to empower and employ non-Turks and Caicos Islanders?  Would other regional tourism-based countries hire Turks and Caicos Islanders over their indigenous people to manage their tourism sector? I think we all know the answer to that question.

As Chairman of The People’s Democratic Movement, I am emphatically stating that our political organization, The PDM does not support the dismantling of the Tourist Board. We do not support making Turks and Caicos Islanders redundant. We do not support the employment of non-Turks and Caicos Islanders to manage our tourism sector when we have capable persons.

Should the people of the Turks and Caicos give us the opportunity to become their government in the next general elections, we will publicize all the details involved with the dissolution of the Tourist Board and the creation of the DMO entity.  We will also follow the money trail to see who benefits from the firing of the seventeen local TCI staff and installing Foreign Competitors to manage our number 1 Tourism Industry.

This indefensible move by the PNP Government proves that Representation Matters

Mr. Ezra Taylor

National Chairman

The People’s Democratic Movement