Yvonne Webb

Art and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters said the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment wast­ed mon­ey to build the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in San Fer­nan­do.

Pe­ters said if his Gov­ern­ment was in pow­er and he was the min­is­ter when the idea was first con­ceived, they would not have been a sec­ond NA­PA. He said he would have up­grad­ed the his­toric Na­pari­ma Bowl and put the in­com­plete NA­PA for oth­er us­es. Pe­ters and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs Mary King toured the south NA­PA, the Chancery Lane Com­plex and the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, Tarou­ba, yes­ter­day. Long de­lays and hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in cost over­runs are what the min­is­te­r­i­al team dis­cov­ered when they toured the three con­tro­ver­sial projects un­der­tak­en by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ude­cott) in San Fer­nan­do.

Pe­ters said, how­ev­er, the projects were too big to be scrapped. Fol­low­ing a tour of NA­PA, King said the build­ing, which had an ini­tial cost of $205 mil­lion, was now spi­ralling up­wards to be­tween $280 to $290 mil­lion and was ex­pect­ed to cost as much as $300 mil­lion. King said the ad­di­tion­al cost would have to be fac­tored in the bud­get for fis­cal 2010/2011. Pe­ters ex­plained the cost rose due to the stop­page of work to re­move sew­er lines, which were dis­cov­ered af­ter con­struc­tion be­gan. He said be­cause the project was un­der­tak­en with­out the req­ui­site ap­proval from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) it al­so had in­curred a fine, the amount of which was not yet known.

Pe­ters said he was not sat­is­fied with the sta­tus of the project which was one year be­hind sched­ule. Com­ple­tion, be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny, is now sched­uled for next Jan­u­ary. He said the seat­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for a max­i­mum of 810 pa­trons in the main au­di­to­ri­um was un­ac­cept­able. He added: "Nei­ther of them is worth the mon­ey for the seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty... this one nor the one in Port-of-Spain. "We could have built some­thing which could have housed much more peo­ple. If you have a show in Trinidad and To­ba­go and you have 810 peo­ple, then you have a buss show," he not­ed.

How­ev­er, he said, it was too late to re­design the build­ing, which would re­quire a lot more mon­ey. Pe­ters said they would look at al­ter­na­tive us­es to re­gain the cost to the state, but ob­served: "We will nev­er be able to pay for these things. Our great grand­chil­dren would be pay­ing for these things. It mat­ters not what ac­tiv­i­ties you keep here, in terms of a fi­nan­cial re­turn, we will nev­er be able to do that." King, how­ev­er, said they could write it off as a loss-mak­ing project.

She said they would have to con­cep­tu­alise a busi­ness plan to en­sure it gen­er­at­ed in­come as well as a sur­plus since they would have to pay back the gov­ern­ment-to- gov­ern­ment loan bor­rowed to con­struct the fa­cil­i­ty. To turn around a prof­it, King sug­gest­ed, the build­ing could be used for oth­er pur­pos­es. King said: "It can be used for con­fer­ences. We have a large au­di­to­ri­um-type the­atre that can be used for busi­ness, as well as, Gov­ern­ment func­tions, as well as dra­ma and the­atre. "We have to make it a prof­it ma­chine," King, an econ­o­mist, added.