Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Trees and shrubs are grow­ing out of build­ings, oc­cu­pied and aban­doned. Emp­ty lots, over­grown with bush­es, tall grass, and used as a dump­ing ground for garbage, are every­where in this cap­i­tal city called Port-of-Spain, from Wood­brook in the west to Char­lotte Street in the east. On­ly with­in the last month were shrubs grow­ing out of the Red House build­ing-his­tor­i­cal­ly, the seat of T&T's Par­lia­ment-re­moved as the build­ing fi­nal­ly un­der­goes an ex­pen­sive and much-need­ed re­fur­bish­ment. Port-of-Spain has all the facets of a city in de­cline. Poor­ly main­tained pub­lic and pri­vate­ly-owned build­ings: fad­ed, peel­ing paint, moss-cov­ered walls, se­cu­ri­ty bars and ra­zor wire around every­thing, from air-con­di­tion units to rooftops. Cha­con Street has been re­duced to a space for hu­man ex­cre­ment. Blocks of the city that were de­stroyed by the loot­ing and fires from the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup are still emp­ty-a key one be­ing the lot op­po­site Port-of-Spain's bus ter­mi­nus, City Gate, on which a 26-storey of­fice com­plex known as Broadgate was to have been con­struct­ed since 2010. That project has gone no where. Port-of-Spain was once known as a place to shop, lime and con­duct busi­ness.

The glam­our of the 1970s and 1980s are gone. Those with longer mem­o­ries will re­call Glendin­ning's, Stephen's and John­son's and Wool­worth's, all on Fred­er­ick Street, in the days when peo­ple looked for­ward to com­ing in­to town to shop.

Port-of-Spain has been the cap­i­tal of T&T since 1757. Pre­vi­ous­ly many cit­i­zens would flock to the city, as it was the main cen­tre for re­tail, gov­ern­ment min­istries, restau­rants as well as be­ing an im­por­tant fi­nan­cial ser­vice cen­tre for the Caribbean. Itis home to the largest con­tain­er port on the is­land and one of the sev­er­al ship­ping hubs for ex­port­ing of both agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tured goods. But over the years cer­tain parts of the city have fall­en to ru­ins. Busi­ness­es have con­sis­tent­ly com­plained about the in­ef­fi­cient and ar­cha­ic sys­tems at the port that im­pact on their over­all suc­cess. The World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum's Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port 2011/12 ranked T&T 81 out of 142 coun­tries. Ronald Ram­jat­tan, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer St Lu­cian food pro­duc­er, Baron Foods, said it took him five months to wade through sev­er­al doc­u­ments to re­ceive an ap­proval for the es­tab­lish­ment of a fac­to­ry in T&T.

More than 400 un­der-utilised spots.

Not on­ly the is­sue of ef­fi­cien­cy needs to be ad­dressed to boost busi­ness in the City, but al­so the out­look. Ac­cord­ing to Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing, there are more than 430 un­der-utilised spots in the city, com­pris­ing di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings with grass is grow­ing out of them, un­paint­ed and peel­ing walls, aban­doned lots and homes, run-down car parks and not to men­tion smelly al­leys and walk­ways. Pedes­tri­ans are al­so seen walk­ing gin­ger­ly on the pave­ment hop­ing not to twist their an­kles on an un­ex­pect­ed hole or un­even parts. Dri­vers are forced to ne­go­ti­ate and ma­neu­ver their ve­hi­cles to avoid gap­ing pot­holes and chipped-away pitch from Port-of-Spain's road­ways. There is noth­ing like a quick trip to the City. Cit­i­zens com­plain about hav­ing to trav­el to, or through, Port-of-Spain in traf­fic that is grid­locked at any hour of the day, just to en­dure hours of wait­ing to col­lect one doc­u­ment from any giv­en gov­ern­ment ser­vice. Crime is an­oth­er crit­i­cal fac­tor, which has moved away from cer­tain ar­eas to more pop­u­lat­ed ones such as City Gate, Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade and Fred­er­ick Street. The Com­pet­i­tive­ness re­port al­so stat­ed that the most prob­lem­at­ic fac­tors for do­ing busi­ness in T&T are crime and theft, which re­main at num­ber one fol­lowed by in­ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy, poor work eth­ic of the na­tion's work­force and cor­rup­tion. The woes con­tin­ue with un­se­cured park­ing that de­ters cit­i­zens from ven­tur­ing in­to Port-of-Spain to en­gage in any kind of ac­tiv­i­ty.

What has been done to change things?

Dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, at­tempts were made to mod­ernise and give the city a face-lift by con­struct­ing 300 feet high build­ings like the Wa­ter­front com­plex, which stands like a bea­con in the na­tion's cap­i­tal. This fa­cil­i­ty that bor­ders the shore line in­cludes two 26-storey of­fice tow­ers at 885,000 square foot com­bined with a 22-storey, 409,000 square foot, 428-room Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. It's the largest con­fer­ence cen­tre in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean at 55,000 square foot. The Wa­ter­front com­plex pro­vid­ed a plat­form for T&T to host the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in April 2009, whose guests in­clud­ed Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton. Port-of-Spain al­so host­ed The Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in 2009 and Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum in 2011. The present ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der the Trade Min­istry is seek­ing to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of do­ing busi­ness by im­ple­ment­ing the TTBiz Link, a project that has been on­go­ing since 2009. TTBi­zLink is an IT-plat­form known as a Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow (SEW) that is de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness and trade.

The City lacks a smile

Louis Lee Sing, the Port-of-Spain may­or, says de­spite these at­tempts to dress up the city, it is still suf­fer­ing from a lack of smile. He said there are too many is­sues bur­den­ing the City. "In ad­di­tion to crime, lack of prop­er­ty se­cu­ri­ty, con­ges­tion and the city lit­tered with street dwellers-there are al­so too many va­cant spots, aban­doned and di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings in Port-of-Spain. We have a good phys­i­cal plant, but we have not main­tained it prop­er­ly," he said in an in­ter­view at his Citadel of­fice, Port-of-Spain. In an on­go­ing in­ven­to­ry ex­er­cise un­der­tak­en by the City Cor­po­ra­tion, it re­vealed there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 435 va­cant spots in­clud­ing aban­doned and di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings. He said the Cor­po­ra­tion had passed he list on­to the Gov­ern­ment for it to in­den­ti­fy which ones are owned by the State, which are pri­vate­ly owned and those that are un­der the City Cor­po­ra­tion. "Once we have done that we would move to mon­e­tise the ones we are re­spon­si­ble for."

Lee Sing said land is a scarce com­mod­i­ty in the city and it ought to be prop­er­ly utilised to gen­er­ate rev­enue for the city and en­cour­age pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ex­cel­lence.

He not­ed that ex­or­bi­tant amount of fund­ing is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to restora­tion rather than main­te­nance. Draw­ing an ex­am­ple, he said un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day Ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­prox­i­mate­ly 37 mil­lion was spent on restor­ing White Hall, which is still in need of re­pairs. "We have so many land marks, prop­er­ties that no pro­vi­sions have been made for main­te­nance, for ex­am­ple the Holy Rosary Church, which is in a state of de­cay." Oth­er eye­sores in­clude the old Po­lice Head­quar­ters, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice build­ing, Red House, old An­gos­tu­ra lot on Nel­son Street, most parts of George street and some of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's apart­ment blocks. He rec­om­mend­ed that a com­mit­tee should be es­tab­lished and a fund ex­clu­sive­ly set-up for the main­te­nance of build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture like pave­ments and drains. He said the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceives very lit­tle mon­ey from the City to main­tain it. Lee Sing ex­plained that the prop­er­ty tax­es gen­er­at­ed from the City goes in­to a con­sol­i­dat­ed fund, where the Fi­nance Min­is­ter then takes the mon­ey and dis­burs­es it to projects in oth­er parts of Gov­ern­ment. "When peo­ple pay land and build­ing tax­es, the City on­ly gets land tax­es and the build­ing tax­es goes to the (con­sol­i­dat­ed) fund.

Im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion

Lee Sing said there is no le­gal frame­work in place to deal with land­lords who fail to main­tain their prop­er­ties. "It is dif­fi­cult to en­cour­age peo­ple like NGO's, who were giv­en state land to build with­in the stip­u­lat­ed three years." But there are those who have not built any­thing for more than 20 years, he not­ed. The gov­ern­ment has to bring the kind of leg­is­la­tion to en­cour­age peo­ple to de­vel­op and main­tain their prop­er­ties. Be­sides leg­is­la­tion as a so­lu­tion, Lee Sing said there should be a bal­ance of be­tween res­i­dence and busi­ness­es through­out the city. It should not be overun with on­ly com­merce, he said. Apart from these is­sues Lee Sing said paid park­ing is com­ing and the Cor­po­ra­tion would be deal­ing with the is­sue of street vend­ing. "We are hop­ing to turn low­er Char­lotte Street in­to a pedes­tri­an mall and once that is done there would be ze­ro tol­er­ance of street vend­ing." He said so far the Cor­po­ra­tion has un­der­tak­en 68 projects, which in­clude more restora­tion work and in­fra­struc­ture like drains and pave­ments. Lee Sing said there are about 3,000 pit la­trine be­ing used by res­i­dents of the city in 2012. The Cor­po­ra­tion is spend­ing about $2 mil­lion on 87 projects that in­clude the re­place­ment of these pit la­trines with prop­er bath­room fa­cil­i­ties. He said Port-of-Spain has the po­ten­tial to be the best City in the re­gion. "We have a good in­her­i­tance and we must not squan­der it."

The City los­ing busi­ness

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud said con­sumer spend­ing is down sig­nif­i­cant­ly due to the many is­sues plagu­ing the City. Aboud said it is a two-fold de­cline where the weak­ness in the glob­al econ­o­my has re­duced con­sumer con­fi­dence. And Port-of-Spain has not done enough to com­pete with oth­er op­tions avail­able to con­sumers such as Movi­eTowne, Falls of West Mall and Trinci­ty mall, said Aboud, who owns clothe stores in the cap­i­tal.

"The city is at cross­roads fac­ing very se­ri­ous de­ci­sions about its fu­ture." For ex­am­ple, he said Port-of-Spain is los­ing busi­ness­es. He said with­in the last 18 months, 12 Port-of-Spain stores have closed down, in­clud­ing a huge sports goods store and ap­par­el, hard­ware, shoe stores. An elec­tron­ics store is in the process of clos­ing its doors.

Sim­i­lar to May­or Lee Sing, Aboud said crime, se­cu­ri­ty, se­cured park­ing and con­ges­tion are some of the fac­tors af­fect­ing the con­fi­dence of busi­ness­es that are lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain and those that are think­ing of com­ing in­to the City.

There is a mi­gra­tion of bui­ness­es from the city, he said. In many de­vel­oped coun­tries gov­ern­ments recog­nised the cru­cial na­ture of park­ing and pro­vid­ed mu­nic­i­pal park­ing. Asked what role is the busines sec­tor play­ing to im­prove the phys­i­cal struc­tures of their build­ings, Aboud said some busi­ness­es are afraid to in­vest be­cause cn­sumers are not send­ing and they are fac­ing un­just com­peti­ton from hus­tlers who line up in front their stores and lure away their cus­tomers. Noth­with­stand­ing that there are some store like Fran­cis Fash­ion and De­tours that have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in their buidlings. But the di­min­ished out­look of cus­tomers have hurt the city.