Pe­ter Bal­roop

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his ad­min­is­tra­tion are re­fus­ing to ditch what is be­lieved to be a plan hatched at Cab­i­net lev­el to ac­quire the just over sev­en acres of prime Port-of-Spain land on which the 58-year-old Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo stands. As a re­sult, the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T has filed for ju­di­cial re­view, seek­ing to re­strain Man­ning, who is named as the prime de­fen­dant, from con­tin­u­ing to move to change the le­gal frame­work un­der which the so­ci­ety op­er­ates. The le­gal chal­lenge was filed by the San Fer­nan­do law firm head­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, late last month, and a date for hear­ing is be­ing await­ed. The zoo has been in op­er­a­tion as a statu­to­ry body since No­vem­ber 8, 1952, and is home to more than 190 species of an­i­mals. It ex­ists on state fund­ing, earned in­come and do­na­tions. (See oth­er sto­ry).

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment of claim filed by the law firm, alarm bells rang in the so­ci­ety's board­room when it re­ceived of­fi­cial word last Ju­ly from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Tourism, that Cab­i­net at its Ju­ly 1 meet­ing had de­cid­ed to re­peal the ZSTT (In­cor­po­ra­tion) Or­di­nance, No 12 of 1952, and re­place it with "a more de­tailed le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work con­sis­tent with cur­rent le­gal de­sign of statu­to­ry bod­ies." The so­ci­ety re­spond­ed with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, dat­ed Ju­ly 31, de­mand­ing the re­scind­ing of this de­ci­sion, with­out suc­cess. And by let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 4, the so­ci­ety again ob­ject­ed to the leg­isla­tive reshuf­fle, but was in­formed there was no turn­ing back, the state­ment in­di­cat­ed. Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Guardian that Man­ning was specif­i­cal­ly named as the main de­fen­dant in the claim for ju­di­cial re­view, be­cause he heads the Cab­i­net. He added: "The Gov­ern­ment, ap­par­ent­ly, wants to na­tion­alise the zoo, but the Gov­ern­ment does not own the land on which the zoo op­er­ates. It is owned by the trustees of the so­ci­ety."

"To op­er­ate, the zoo needs peo­ple with spe­cial skills who love an­i­mals. "If the Gov­ern­ment takes over the zoo, it can put that prime prop­er­ty to oth­er use." He said the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion was the so­ci­ety's way of fight­ing for the pro­mo­tion of an­i­mal rights and for the pub­lic to have the con­tin­u­ing right to view the an­i­mals in their St Ann's home, which is next to the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, which in turn bor­ders Pres­i­dent's House. He said he in­tend­ed to ar­gue that the Cab­i­net de­ci­sion was un­law­ful, on the grounds it would like­ly breach the so­ci­ety's right to the en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty, as guar­an­teed by the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion. Ma­haraj is de­mand­ing that the Cab­i­net records, de­tail­ing all the dis­cus­sions that took place lead­ing to the de­ci­sion to amend the ZSTT Or­di­nance, be pro­duced in court.

ABOVE: ?Lots of small en­tre­pre­neurs make a liv­ing at the en­trance to the zoo, sell­ing wind­mills, plas­tic toys, sno cone and oth­er items that are mag­nets for chil­dren vis­it­ing.

Lutch­me­di­al: Zoo in throes of ex­pan­sion

Gupte Lutch­me­di­al, the so­ci­ety's pres­i­dent, said the Gov­ern­ment would be go­ing against its es­tab­lished pol­i­cy to in­ter­fere now with the run­ning of the zoo by an NGO like his so­ci­ety. Lutch­me­di­al said the so­ci­ety had a mar­ket plan ap­proved by the Tourism Min­istry, which in­volved an up­grade of the zoo that would lead with­in five years to there be­ing no need for a sub­ven­tion. Some 200,000 peo­ple vis­it the zoo each year, and the plan was to up the fee from the cur­rent $15 for adults and $7 for chil­dren to around $25. He groused to the Sun­day Guardian that it seemed to him the Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on rop­ing in the zoo in its quest to con­trol every­thing in T&T. How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al in­sist­ed that the so­ci­ety had no in­ten­tion of back­ing down, and in­deed was in­tent on part­ner­ing with the Man­a­tee Trust to use 369 acres of land in Nar­i­va to house larg­er an­i­mals in the zoo.

He agreed with at­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj that run­ning a zoo need­ed a cadre of ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple who were not stuck in the "sev­en to four" syn­drome. Yes­ter­day, work­ers from the El So­cor­ro firm, CG Con­trac­tors were busy build­ing en­clo­sures for new an­i­mal ex­hibits, and the zoo was crowd­ed with vis­i­tors and their chil­dren gawk­ing at the caged crea­tures. Iron­i­cal­ly, the Sun­day Guardian over­heard two zoo em­ploy­ees dis­cussing in hushed tones plans they had heard to pri­va­tise the zoo and of­fer em­ploy­ees VSEP pack­ages. They spoke of what em­ploy­ees with 25 years and over would be tak­ing home, and whether they would be re-em­ployed.

?Sub­ven­tion up by al­most $1m

?Ac­cord­ing to the Draft Es­ti­mates for the 2010 Na­tion­al Bud­get, Gov­ern­ment gave the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (ZSTT) a sub­ven­tion of $6,004,700 to run the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo for fis­cal year 2009. For fis­cal 2010, the sub­ven­tion is $6,932,200 which is an in­crease of $927,600. Oth­er sources of in­come pale in com­par­i­son to the Gov­ern­ment's sub­ven­tion. For 2010, it is es­ti­mat­ed the ZSTT will re­ceive a to­tal of $1.4 mil­lion in oth­er in­come. A break­down shows that in­cludes rent of $84,000; gate re­ceipts of $1.3 mil­lion; sales of $1,000, sub­scrip­tions of $1,000, do­na­tions of $15,000 and $20,000 ac­count­ed for as mis­cel­la­neous in­come.

Some facts:

?Back in Ju­ly, 2007, then Tourism Min­is­ter Howard Chin Lee an­nounced a $56.8 mil­lion plan in­volv­ing a Seat­tle, USA con­sul­tant to ex­pand the zoo by five acres. Even ear­li­er, the pre­vi­ous UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion had an­nounced through then Tourism Min­is­ter Adesh Nanan in Ju­ly, 2001, the zoo would be re­moved lock, stock and bar­rel to 40 acres of land in Chick­land, in cen­tral Trinidad. That acreage would be trans­formed in­to a con­ser­va­tion cen­tre, since a team of lo­cal botan­ic ex­perts, in­clud­ing Prof Julien Ken­ny and Prof John Spence, had found there was no suit­able room in Port-of-Spain for ex­pan­sion of Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo. In­deed, a re­port stat­ed that com­pared to in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings the cur­rent zoo was sub-stan­dard. How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al said the land in Chick­land was not found to be suit­able, be­cause it was lo­cat­ed in a val­ley.