Zahra Gor­don

Con­ser­va­tion­ists are once again lob­by­ing for swift gov­ern­ment ac­tion on restora­tion projects in Port-of-Spain. The lat­est lob­by came dur­ing a tour of the his­toric Port-of-Spain build­ings on Wednes­day. The tour was or­gan­ised by the min­istries of Tourism, Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and the Na­tion­al Trust.

Dur­ing the tour, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Stephen Cadiz, heard con­cerns raised by both Queen's Roy­al Col­lege prin­ci­pal Lennard Hink­son and mem­bers of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion. Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion mem­bers con­gre­gat­ed out­side Mille Fleurs, where they have held peace­ful protests for the past two years, and again plead­ed with min­istry of­fi­cials to start work on the his­toric build­ing, which is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing.

Cadiz ap­plaud­ed them for their lob­by­ing, adding that pass­ing Mille Fleurs on his way home from work was de­press­ing. Michele Ce­les­tine, a mem­ber of the group, stressed the need for restora­tion. "These build­ings were built by Trinida­di­ans, our an­ces­tors," she said.

"The ar­chi­tec­tur­al beau­ty of these build­ings is a tes­ti­mo­ny to our po­ten­tial and we need to re­store some of that work eth­ic as well and have that na­tion­al pride put back in­to our coun­try." At QRC, Hink­son said he was hap­py the tour was tak­ing place, since it would draw at­ten­tion to the build­ing.

He said even though QRC was re­stored in 2010, the build­ing was still falling apart, adding the school need­ed to be treat­ed as a her­itage site and not "just a school." He al­so said he had writ­ten to and called the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture nu­mer­ous times about the is­sue but got no re­sponse.

The oth­er build­ings vis­it­ed on the tour were Arch­bish­op's House, Stollmey­er's Cas­tle, Hayes Court, White­hall and Am­bard's House. There was al­so a stop at Pres­i­dent's House, but the me­dia were not al­lowed on the com­pound by se­cu­ri­ty. The roof of Pres­i­dent's House col­lapsed in 2010 and is yet to be re­paired.

Pres­i­dent's House and the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en are among many build­ings that should be list­ed as her­itage prop­er­ties of in­ter­est to be pro­tect­ed by law un­der the Na­tion­al Trust Act. The Na­tion­al Trust was formed in 1991 to ad­dress these is­sues and work to­wards pro­tec­tion of her­itage sites, but there re­mains no of­fi­cial list or legal­ly pro­tect­ed sites.

At sites like White­hall, part of the roof and the walls on the sec­ond floor showed wa­ter dam­age and de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. Asked what progress the trust had made to­wards pro­tect­ing such sites since its for­ma­tion, deputy chair­man of the Na­tion­al Trust, Dr Ku­mar Ma­habir, said he could not an­swer be­cause he had on­ly been with the trust since 2010.

He said the trust had fi­nal­ly met with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al last week about the pro­ce­dure for list­ing sites for pro­tec­tion, but he did not know how much longer this process would take. He said dur­ing his tenure at the trust, pub­lic aware­ness work had been car­ried out through pub­lic lec­tures, film screen­ings, tours and a book about built her­itage.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Clifton de Coteau and Na­tion­al Trust chair­man Vel Lewis were no­tice­ably ab­sent from the tour, which was led by Louis B Homer, a con­sul­tant to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty. De Coteau's ad­vis­er, Char­lene Sookoo, said he was un­able to at­tend be­cause he was ill, while Ma­habir said Lewis had a pri­or en­gage­ment.