Even be­fore the new Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial­ly as­sumed du­ties on Wednes­day, they were is­sued their first tri­al— set­tle their out­stand­ing rent bill of over $250,000 or face evic­tion.

“We en­tered the premis­es of Pan Trin­ba­go this morn­ing and this first chal­lenge this ex­ec­u­tive will have to face is a let­ter that we re­ceived from Amar Prop­er­ties De­vel­op­ers lim­it­ed,” said pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore at Pan Trin­ba­go’s of­fice, op­po­site Vic­to­ria Square, in Port-of-Spain, fol­low­ing a hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny from the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive.

Ram­sey-Moore be­lieved the tim­ing of the no­tice is linked to Robert Amar’s de­feat in Sun­day’s elec­tion.

Amar was an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date for the Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­den­cy. He man­aged to gain 19 votes in Sat­ur­day’s elec­tion.

“We are not alarmed be­cause we sus­pect­ed the pain of de­feat would have sur­faced. I ex­pect­ed that Mr Amar, a man who would have of­fered him­self just about two or three days to be elect­ed pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go would have done the ho­n­ourable thing and sit and have a dis­cus­sion with us as an ex­ec­u­tive so we could all put our hands on the wheel to take Pan Trin­ba­go by its boot­straps and take it to an­oth­er lev­el,” said Ram­sey-Moore.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia learnt the build­ing was not owned by Robert Amar, but rather his broth­er, Ricky Amar.

The land­lord said the evic­tion no­tice had noth­ing to do with his broth­er’s cam­paign and claimed that Pan Trin­ba­go had been ow­ing four months rent.

“It has noth­ing to do with Mr Amar and the elec­tion, if he (Robert) had won the elec­tion he would be fac­ing the same fire,” the land­lord said in a phone in­ter­view.

He said the let­ter was pre­pared be­fore the elec­tion as he was promised by out­go­ing as­sis­tant sec­re­tary An­drew Sal­vador that he would be paid by last Tues­day. He said when the mon­ey failed to ar­rive, the let­ter was pre­pared.

“It’s not an is­sue about old ex­ec­u­tive or new ex­ec­u­tive, it’s about pay­ing rent,” he said, not­ing he was open to dis­cus­sions with the new ex­ec­u­tive.

“It is not that I want to evict them. They are our ten­ant, and they owe us mon­ey,” he said.

Out­go­ing pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had strug­gled to pay its bills due to out­stand­ing monies owed to them.

“We have out­stand­ing monies to re­ceive from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion from since 2017 and we have not re­ceived it as for rev­enue to­wards the or­gan­i­sa­tion. We al­so have not re­ceived all the rev­enues that we had from the Panora­ma that has gone,” said Di­az, “How are we go­ing to pay our bills when we have not re­ceived the rev­enues to pay it ?”

Guardian Me­dia has been in­formed that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion did em­bark in a pan tun­ing and re­pair pro­gramme along­side Pan Trin­ba­go last year, but the or­gan­i­sa­tion had not prop­er­ly in­voiced the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for that pro­gramme. The of­fi­cial said the sum of mon­ey was not sig­nif­i­cant.