Gail Alexan­der

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants' As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is anx­ious about arrange­ments for the Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' con­fer­ence sched­uled for No­vem­ber in Port-of-Spain, since the city will be then in the height of pre-Christ­mas ac­tiv­i­ties, DO­MA's pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud says. Aboud said yes­ter­day that down­town busi­ness­es had ex­pe­ri­enced be­tween a 30 and 40 per cent re­duc­tion (year on year) dur­ing April, when the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as was held in Port of Spain. This par­tic­u­lar­ly oc­curred when sum­mit prac­tice "runs" were held and roads in­to the city were closed off that month. The Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence (CHOGM) takes place in Port-of-Spain be­tween No­vem­ber 27 and 29.

At a me­dia brief­ing last week, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to host­ing some as­pects in To­ba­go. Oth­er con­fer­ence or­gan­is­ers as­sured that dis­cus­sions would be held with all stake­hold­ers on CHOGM much ear­li­er than oc­curred with the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit. Aboud said yes­ter­day: "We're await­ing in­ter­ac­tion. Anx­i­ety lev­els among Port-of-Spain/re­gion­al busi­ness­es are much high­er than it was for the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, con­sid­er­ing how se­vere­ly we were af­fect­ed by that." Aboud said the No­vem­ber week­end cho­sen for CHOGM was the last mon­thend week­end be­fore Christ­mas. He added: "It is con­sid­ered to be the very peak of dis­trib­u­tive and re­tails sec­tor busi­ness. Al­so then, ac­tiv­i­ty at the port is sev­er­al mul­ti­ples high­er than it is dur­ing April.

"The Amer­i­c­as sum­mit oc­curred in the mid­dle of a very slow month, yet it had tremen­dous dis­rup­tive ef­fects on the north-west penin­su­la." Aboud said where­as month-to-month busi­ness in the re­tail sec­tor had been run­ning at be­tween 7 and 15 per cent be­low av­er­age, re­ports re­ceived by DO­MA in­di­cat­ed that down­town busi­ness­es ex­pe­ri­enced be­tween a 30 and 40 per cent re­duc­tion (year on year) for April. "When the sum­mit or­gan­is­ers held their dry run on March 29 , it caused mas­sive grid­lock in the East/West Cor­ri­dor. "We were ad­vised by hun­dreds of reg­u­lar cus­tomers that they would not come to Port-of-Spain for the two weeks pri­or to the sum­mit. "On the Sat­ur­day of the sum­mit, we re­ceived com­plaints from Ch­aguara­mas busi­ness­es, who said they sus­tained loss­es, as nei­ther cus­tomers nor sup­plies could trav­el."

"The clos­ing of the cru­cial Wright­son Road artery paral­ysed the en­tire north-west penin­su­la. There­fore, clos­ing Wright­son Road for CHOGM–on the last mon­thend be­fore Christ­mas–should be at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of every­one re­spon­si­ble for traf­fic man­age­ment and pro­tec­tion of com­mer­cial en­ter­prise from dis­lo­ca­tion." Aboud said hold­ing CHOGM's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in the Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my on Queen's Park Sa­van­nah "would shift a tremen­dous lo­gis­ti­cal bur­den from the cru­cial south­ern sec­tor of Port-of-Spain to the north­ern perime­ter, "where road clo­sures should not have the same dis­as­trous ef­fect as in April."