Kali­fa Clyne

Gov­ern­ment may have to start from scratch on the con­struc­tion of a head­quar­ters for PanTrin­ba­go, de­spite spend­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4 mil­lion on the ex­ist­ing struc­ture at Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua. Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Lin­coln Dou­glas said, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, that over $40 mil­lion was es­ti­mat­ed to have the head­quar­ters com­plet­ed. "We met last week with Ude­cott (Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T), who is the project man­ag­er, and PanTrin­ba­go and we are cur­rent­ly in the process of cre­at­ing new de­signs for the or­gan­i­sa­tion," Dou­glas said.

Dou­glas said new de­signs might in­clude train­ing class­es, a pan mu­se­um and mon­ey-mak­ing fa­cil­i­ties."We are al­so eval­u­at­ing the cur­rent struc­ture to see if it is work­able or if we need to start fresh."The struc­ture is 11 years old and shows signs of ne­glect and van­dal­ism."The prop­er­ty has been van­dalised and de­grad­ed to a great ex­tent. We have to de­cide whether to con­tin­ue us­ing that struc­ture or to start a new one."Dou­glas said the venue was al­so un­der ques­tion in terms of ac­cess and its prox­im­i­ty to the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

He said he ex­pect­ed di­a­logue to be com­plet­ed this month but did not have an es­ti­mat­ed date for the com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion."We are push­ing for this as soon as pos­si­ble and we are try­ing to fig­ure out what is the best we can get for the mon­ey we need to spend."Re­spond­ing to ques­tions by e-mail, Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms, me­dia, events and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach man­ag­er at Ude­cott, said a de­ci­sion was to be fi­nalised by the PanTrin­ba­go board."PanTrin­ba­go is look­ing to max­imise us­age of the site, with a view to earn­ing rev­enue, so they can be­come self-suf­fi­cient and hence be able to fund the needs of the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty for Car­ni­val and oth­er PanTrin­ba­go-or­gan­ised events, in­de­pen­dent of gov­ern­ment fund­ing," said Sta­ple­ton-Whyms.

She al­so list­ed the fa­cil­i­ties to be made avail­able at the pan head­quar­ters, which in­clud­ed a pan chroming unit, a steel pan fac­to­ry and a gas sta­tion.PanTrin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az con­firmed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with Ude­cott and the min­istry.