Wes­ley Gib­bings

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The site of the aban­doned Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain Post Of­fice has been iden­ti­fied as a pro­posed per­ma­nent, spe­cial­ly de­signed lo­ca­tion for Pan Trin­ba­go’s head­quar­ters.

In mak­ing the dis­clo­sure Sat­ur­day evening at the Or­ches­tra Fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Pan Trin­ba­go had dri­ven a “hard bar­gain” on the mat­ter but that the arrange­ment will leave the or­gan­i­sa­tion “in a lo­ca­tion wor­thy of the home of steel­band.”

“The Gov­ern­ment and Pan Trin­ba­go have agreed to a de­sign for a head­quar­ters build­ing wor­thy of its lo­ca­tion in the city of Port-of-Spain on Wright­son Road on the old post of­fice site. And very soon when you see the ar­chi­tects’ ren­der­ing of what that build­ing would look like, I am guar­an­tee­ing you that you will be proud be­cause like every­thing else, it will look some­where like a pan,” he said.

“And in the city of Port-of-Spain, the on­ly city in the world that will have a build­ing like that, Pan Trin­ba­go and the Gov­ern­ment will share that build­ing with Pan Trin­ba­go us­ing its share of the build­ing to sup­port its fi­nan­cial ven­tures and be in a lo­ca­tion wor­thy of the home where steel­band was in­vent­ed.”

The move seeks to set­tle long­stand­ing ques­tions re­lat­ed to the abort­ed Pan Trin­ba­go struc­ture at Trinci­ty, lo­cat­ed on prop­er­ty giv­en to the steel­band body in 2001 by the Bas­deo Pan­day Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion. The skele­tal struc­ture has been fre­quent­ly de­scribed by com­men­ta­tors as an “eye­sore.”

Ad­dress­ing the old Pan Trin­ba­go site plan, Row­ley said, “A gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in at­tempt­ing to pro­mote and as­sist Pan Trin­ba­go in the man­age­ment of pan af­fairs, had giv­en the steel­pan move­ment a plot of land out in the east, just south of Trinci­ty, for a Pan Trin­ba­go head­quar­ters and pos­si­bly a busi­ness site. Pan Trin­ba­go stepped out halt­ing­ly to do that and I dare say it got not on­ly stuck in the mud, but it lit­er­al­ly be­came a na­tion­al eye­sore.”

Re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, the site has been iden­ti­fied as a pro­posed venue for con­struc­tion of a crick­et acad­e­my fund­ed by the In­di­an con­glom­er­ate Re­liance In­dus­tries Ltd.

PM Row­ley con­firmed this dur­ing the event, say­ing, “Not too long ago, a very dis­tin­guished In­di­an firm, very deeply in­volved in crick­et and want­i­ng to get in­volved to sup­port West In­dies crick­et and their own ven­ture, of­fered to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate on that site a crick­et acad­e­my as now ex­ists in Mum­bai in Ma­has­tra in In­dia.

“The Gov­ern­ment agreed to ac­cept the pro­pos­al and the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tri­bu­tion to that crick­et acad­e­my, which we hope will come to fruition in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, was to put in the land as re­quest­ed but to do so, we had to talk to Pan Trin­ba­go and get them to agree to do an ex­change where the Gov­ern­ment will get back that piece of land in that lo­ca­tion, get in­volved with the crick­et acad­e­my there, and do some­thing for Pan Trin­ba­go else­where.”

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, claimed in par­lia­ment last month that a check by at­tor­neys had shown that le­gal ti­tle for the land had nev­er for­mal­ly passed to Pan Trin­ba­go.

“They ma­m­aguy the whole pan move­ment with this piece of land,” Mitchell told the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

There once was the promise of a re­sump­tion of work on the Trinci­ty site, with Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore promis­ing the re­sump­tion of work in 2023.

The PM al­so ad­dressed the on­go­ing furor over plans to “re­place the car­i­ca­tures of Christo­pher Colum­bus’ ships on the Coat of Arms with the steel­pan.” He said “not sur­pris­ing­ly, it gen­er­at­ed a pletho­ra of con­ver­sa­tions, not all of it good.”

“But I’m sure that at the end of the day, like in­de­pen­dence, like oth­er things that we didn’t ab­sorb at their birth, the pan on the na­tion­al Coat of Arms will be a sym­bol of ho­n­our for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”