The coun­cil of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion plans to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to ad­vise on an ap­pro­pri­ate mon­u­ment to re­place the now-re­moved Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue and re­name the square on In­de­pen­dence Square that bore his name.

Speak­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion’s statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall on Knox Street yes­ter­day, May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said an­oth­er com­mit­tee will be formed to ad­vise on re­nam­ing part of Ox­ford Street in ho­n­our of civ­il rights and Pan-African ac­tivist Kwame Ture.

“So that mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic can ex­pect that in the month of Sep­tem­ber we should have those com­mit­tees es­tab­lished, and there­after, we will be able to re­port to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on what they can ex­pect to see in terms of next steps in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of those de­ci­sions,” he said.

On African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, Al­leyne an­nounced the re­moval of Colum­bus’ stat­ue in Port-of-Spain and plans to pay trib­ute to the vic­tims of the geno­cide Colum­bus led as well as the Transat­lantic Slave Trade.

“In the com­ing month, the coun­cil will sit and con­sid­er the next steps to com­plete that par­tic­u­lar project,” he said.

Ear­li­er this month, the stat­ue that had stood in Port-of-Spain since 1881 was of­fi­cial­ly re­moved.

In Ju­ly 2022, the then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee to re­view and re­port on the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments, and oth­er his­tor­i­cal sig­nage and recog­ni­tion in T&T. Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions were held in Au­gust and De­cem­ber 2024.

In Au­gust last year, Row­ley an­nounced that Colum­bus ships would be re­moved from the Coat of Arms as part of a na­tion­al ef­fort to re­move colo­nial ves­tiges and pro­mote a more cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. The three ships, San­ta Maria, Pin­ta, and Ni­na, were re­placed with the steel­pan, the na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment. The new look Coat of Arms was un­veiled in Jan­u­ary this