Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Al­most two years af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced its pol­i­cy to re­duce rental of gov­ern­ment of­fices, the plan is no clos­er to get­ting off the ground. It was in 2007 that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment's sky­line build­ing projects in the cap­i­tal city, which in­clud­ed the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, was geared at re­duc­ing rental of state agen­cies. A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed, how­ev­er, that to date Gov­ern­ment had not made any sig­nif­i­cant head­way in de­creas­ing the cost of the hefty month­ly rentals. In fact, in­ves­ti­ga­tions dis­closed that Gov­ern­ment forked out a whop­ping $221,371,536.48 an­nu­al­ly, to cov­er the rental of min­istries, the ju­di­cia­ry and of­fices of in­de­pen­dent bod­ies. Among the build­ings is the hefty $3-mil­lion price tag for the rental of the Per­ma­nent Mis­sion of the Re­pub­lic of T&T to the Unit­ed Na­tions, lo­cat­ed on East Street, New York.

RIGHT: One Alexan­dra on Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain, will be the new home of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry in the next few months. Pho­to: Shirley Ba­hadur

The of­fi­cial Web site, how­ev­er, fails to show a pho­to­graph of the up­scale build­ing. The of­fice, which costs $3,286,067.58, falls un­der the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, and its main role is to ad­dress glob­al is­sues pos­ing a threat to the well-be­ing of T&T. Her Ex­cel­len­cy Ma­ri­na Valere is the Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions. She re­placed Am­bas­sador Philip Sealy, who re­tired re­cent­ly. The min­istry has two ad­di­tion­al sub-of­fices at Queen's Park West and Hen­ry Street, in Port-of-Spain, rent­ed at a to­tal month­ly cost of $146,251.05. Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Paula Gopee-Scoon was un­able to con­firm the hefty rental at­tached to the build­ing, on­ly say­ing briefly: "Trinidad and To­ba­go is rep­re­sent­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed Na­tions, by our rep­re­sen­ta­tive It is a mul­ti­lat­er­al in­sti­tu­tion that deals with mul­ti­lat­er­al is­sues. "At this point, I can­not say at what cost the build­ing is be­ing rent­ed at. I am un­able to say."

Swarats­ingh: Ex­pect de­crease in rental with build­ing dri­ve

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Kennedy Swarats­ingh re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment in­tends to pur­chase a build­ing in New York to avoid pay­ing large rental fees. "I can­not give the ex­act time, but I am aware that a de­ci­sion was tak­en to pur­chase a prop­er­ty in New York to house the Per­ma­nent Mis­sion. "The nor­mal pro­ce­dure is when a de­ci­sion is tak­en, it is up to the rel­e­vant min­istry to act ap­pro­pri­ate­ly." Al­so hik­ing up a large rental is the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, which has 43 sub-di­vi­sion of­fices through­out the coun­try, rent­ed at a cost of $1.4 mil­lion. The Min­istry of Fi­nance pays a sim­i­lar rental of $1.2 mil­lion for its 23 di­vi­sion­al of­fices.

The six di­vi­sion­al of­fices of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the city al­so add a $1-mil­lion rental fee to gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus on Rich­mond Street and Wright­son Road was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2008, but con­struc­tion is on­go­ing. As to why mil­lions of dol­lars con­tin­ue to be spent on rental Swarats­ingh said: "Gov­ern­ment rental is cur­rent­ly more than the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza can ac­com­mo­date. Even though we are still rent­ing as we move to build more build­ings, we ex­pect to see some de­crease in the rental cost as we con­tin­ue the build­ing dri­ve." Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry moves to $800,000-a month build­ing. Mean­while, as the rental of gov­ern­ment of­fices con­tin­ues to mount, at least one of the min­istries will move to an up­grad­ed and posh fa­cil­i­ty, at a cost of $800,000 per month. With­in the next few months, the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment will re­lo­cate from Kent House on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, Mar­aval, to a spank­ing new fa­cil­i­ty at One Alexan­dra on Tra­garete Road.

Con­firm­ing the move yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh said the present build­ing was deemed un­fit and un­safe by safe­ty of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, he could not say at what cost the build­ing was be­ing rent­ed. "Over the next three months, the min­istry will be re­lo­cat­ing to Tra­garete Road. The build­ing is struc­tural­ly un­fit, and as a re­sult the min­istry is mov­ing out to a leased fa­cil­i­ty. "This is one of the rea­sons we need to build build­ings. If a build­ing is deemed struc­tural­ly un­fit, it will be ir­re­spon­si­ble to leave em­ploy­ees in it. "This is one of the rea­sons we need to build build­ings," he re­it­er­at­ed. "The build­ing is large enough to ac­com­mo­date the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry." The mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar 23-storey Cus­toms and Ex­cise build­ing re­mains va­cant one year af­ter con­struc­tion. The lus­trous glass build­ing forms part of the $368-mil­lion Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, which is an­oth­er project by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It is ex­pect­ed to ac­com­mo­date four gov­ern­ment min­istries on com­ple­tion, con­sist­ing of the Board of In­land Rev­enue Tow­er, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Head­quar­ters Build­ing, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er, and the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza Parkade. Then Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley had said the aim of the cam­pus was to en­sure the pub­lic could con­ve­nient­ly ac­cess the ser­vices of some of the gov­ern­ment min­istries. How­ev­er, last week Row­ley ques­tioned what was re­spon­si­ble for the de­lay in re­lo­cat­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise build­ing af­ter it was hand­ed over sev­er­al months ago. "The Prime Min­is­ter has in­sist­ed that the project is with­in bud­get and with­in time, but the Cus­toms and Ex­cise build­ing has been com­plet­ed and hand­ed over to Ude­cott more than one year now, and re­mains emp­ty," Row­ley said.

"Steps are be­ing tak­en to out­fit the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs tow­er, but no steps are be­ing tak­en to out­fit the Cus­toms and Ex­cise build­ing, be­cause of some pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty with Ude­cott. "It is now the cen­tre of some le­gal wran­gling, be­cause of the com­pa­ny's faulty pro­ce­dures," he claimed. While un­able to say what caused the de­lay, Swarats­ingh said Ude­cott was mov­ing to out­fit the cam­pus for op­er­a­tions.