Pe­ter Bal­roop

The long-stand­ing seat of Par­lia­ment, the Red House, flanked by Aber­crom­by and St Vin­cent Streets in T&T's cap­i­tal of Port-of-Spain, to­day looks as though it bare­ly sur­vived a hur­ri­cane and hur­ried re­pair work is be­ing un­der­tak­en by a mot­ley crew. The view from the out­side is un­sight­ly to say the least, and there seems some mea­sure of mys­tery ex­act­ly where the re­pairs are head­ing, and to what use the build­ing will be put when the ren­o­va­tions are com­plet­ed, if in­deed that is the plan. The Red House, which Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning sev­er­al years ago bold­ly ear­marked as the fu­ture Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, was un­der the aegis of the State's con­struc­tion ma­chine, the Calder Hart-run Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ude­cott), for the re­pairs which start­ed in 2004 to be com­plet­ed. Ude­cott got in­to the pic­ture af­ter the Cana­di­an firm of Geni­var seem­ing­ly ran in­to dif­fi­cul­ties on the project. In re­cent days, how­ev­er, re­pairs seem to have stalled and the Red House is not cut­ting a pret­ty pic­ture, cra­dled as it is with scaf­fold­ing and its roof en­fold­ed with tar­pau­lin. Most of the perime­ter is en­closed with tall cor­ru­gat­ed iron sheets.

Run around for in­for­ma­tion

Odd­ly enough, when the Sun­day Guardian checked with Ude­cott to find out what was go­ing on, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms was very def­i­nite that all queries about the Red House now had to be di­rect­ed to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. But no in­for­ma­tion from that Min­istry was forth­com­ing. The com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist there, Natasha Ram­nauth, sug­gest­ed e-mail­ing a list of ques­tions the Sun­day Guardian wished an­swered about the fate of the Red House. This done, it was then or­dered that the list of ques­tions be put on an of­fi­cial Guardian let­ter­head and faxed to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Ar­lene Mc­Comie. That was ac­com­plished. Then an­oth­er re­quest came that Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swaraths­ingh would af­ford this news­pa­per a one-on-one in­ter­view to tell all about the Red House.

That was two weeks ago, but Su­san Hunte, Min­is­ter Swaraths­ingh's sec­re­tary, has re­peat­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that he is ab­solute­ly tied up and would not be avail­able for the promised in­ter­view. She was told that a per­fect com­pro­mise would be for the Min­is­ter to re­spond to the queries posed in the ques­tion­naire for­ward­ed to the PS. So far the Sun­day Guardian is wait­ing pa­tient­ly on the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter to un­tie his sched­ule to sat­is­fy the pub­lic's cu­rios­i­ty. It is not known whether the ru­moured im­mi­nent Cab­i­net reshuf­fle has quelled any ea­ger­ness Swaraths­ingh may have had to ven­ture in­to plans for the Red House, an area that has been fraught with red-hot con­tro­ver­sy in re­cent times.

$175m ear­marked for re­pairs

...Sep­tem­ber 2010 last giv­en date for com­ple­tion

A search of the Guardian archives in­di­cat­ed that last time any sol­id facts about the Red House was moot­ed was by In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsanal, who in Oc­to­ber 2008 said $46 mil­lion of the es­ti­mat­ed $175 mil­lion ear­marked for re­pair of the ven­er­a­ble build­ing had been spent. Parsanal told Par­lia­ment in re­sponse to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion that Sep­tem­ber 2010 was the date set for com­ple­tion of re­pairs, which in­clud­ed pre­serv­ing the Red House's dis­tinc­tive fea­tures but at­tend­ing al­so to rot­ted wood­work, loose and bro­ken roof slates, up­grad­ing elec­tri­cal equip­ment and in­stalling an un­der­ground stand­by gen­er­a­tor. At present, how­ev­er, the Par­lia­ment staff are groan­ing un­der the in­con­ve­nience they are un­der­go­ing to con­tin­ue work­ing in the Red House. From the staff's point of view the at­tempt­ed re­pairs have now be­come a huge ball of con­fu­sion.

"We're just the oc­cu­pants," a source stat­ed, adding that they un­der­stood the plan had been to re­pair the roof on the south wing of the Red House, then work on the north wing's roof. How­ev­er, work had start­ed on the north wing's roof be­fore re­pairs had been com­plet­ed on the south wing. And ac­cord­ing to re­ports a lot of ceil­ing work is still to be done. The Sun­day Guardian was told at one time there was some con­sid­er­a­tion be­ing giv­en to sep­a­rat­ing the some 150 Par­lia­ment staff, which in­cludes po­lice of­fi­cers who man the po­lice post there, to build­ings around Port-of-Spain, to clear the way for speed­i­er re­pairs. But so far they have heard noth­ing fur­ther. Man­ning ev­i­dent­ly thinks it is not yet time for him to move in to the Red House. "There are no signs that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter is ready to move in," the source not­ed.