Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a La Brea youth-based non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion are re­quest­ing a meet­ing with the Min­istry of Tourism, Arts and Cul­ture af­ter they were evict­ed from the La Brea Pitch Lake Fa­cil­i­ty.

Founder Quin­cy Joseph of No Youth Left Be­hind (NYLB) said on Mon­day they met locked doors at the fa­cil­i­ty and have not been able to ac­cess their tools and oth­er be­long­ings.

For the past three years, he said, they have been do­ing jan­i­to­r­i­al and land­scap­ing work at the fa­cil­i­ty on a vol­un­teer ba­sis and free of charge.

How­ev­er, he said, they re­quest­ed re­im­burse­ment from the min­istry to cov­er op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture.

In re­sponse, the min­istry, in a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 12, stat­ed that no part­ner­ship or agree­ment was for­malised be­tween the group and the min­istry for pay­ments, re­mu­ner­a­tion or com­pen­sa­tion.

Re­ject­ing their re­quest, the min­istry not­ed that the group’s work was based on vol­un­teerism, and any ex­pen­di­ture in­curred was done by the group on the ba­sis of ad­vanc­ing its (NYLB) aims and ob­jec­tives.

Not­ing that the min­istry was ac­tive­ly en­gaged in re­or­gan­is­ing the op­er­a­tions and man­age­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty, the min­istry ad­vised the group to cease op­er­a­tions and va­cate the premis­es by Feb­ru­ary 28.

Ad­mit­ting the evic­tion no­tice came as a sur­prise, Joseph, who was the for­mer min­istry li­ai­son of­fi­cer at the fa­cil­i­ty, said they re­quest­ed more time to find a lo­ca­tion to store their tools and oth­er be­long­ings.

He said, “All we ask­ing for is a sit-down, an un­der­stand­ing. Even if you don’t want to work with us, be just; be fair. You know we have main­tained the fa­cil­i­ty. Since TDC closed in 2017, this min­istry side has made no rev­enue. The mon­ey they are sav­ing, at least $20,000 from both con­tracts, we are just ask­ing for a per­cent­age of that to re­plen­ish the fi­nances that would have been used.”

Ex­plain­ing that NYLB was in­volved in sev­er­al youth and com­mu­ni­ty-based projects, he said they had to dis­con­tin­ue some of their pro­grammes be­cause they were us­ing the mon­ey to main­tain the Pitch Lake fa­cil­i­ty. 

He is ask­ing the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and the min­is­ter to re­con­sid­er their de­ci­sion and ex­er­cise healthy con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

Even be­fore they be­gan do­ing work with­in the fa­cil­i­ty, he said, they were do­ing land­scap­ing and oth­er projects on the out­skirts of the fa­cil­i­ty, which had boost­ed vis­its to the pitch lake.

Joseph said he made sev­er­al re­quests to the min­istry for a meet­ing to dis­cuss en­ter­ing in­to a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing, but that nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell de­clined to com­ment and re­ferred ques­tions to the min­istry. 

In re­sponse, the min­istry not­ed that Joseph’s em­ploy­ment with the min­istry came to a nat­ur­al end on De­cem­ber 14, 2024.

It em­pha­sised that it had nev­er en­tered in­to any con­tract with NYLB for the pro­vi­sion of jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices at the La Brea Pitch Lake Fa­cil­i­ty.

The min­istry said the NYLB was pro­vid­ed with ad­e­quate time to va­cate the premis­es and as of now, it did not have any ap­proval to re­main at the fa­cil­i­ty.