SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The State has been en­forc­ing stricter rules on delin­quent ten­ants of New City Mall and East­side Plaza, Port-of-Spain, who have been be­hind on their rent for nine years, to­talling more than $4 mil­lion.

The rent is owed for the pe­ri­od 2015 through Feb­ru­ary 29, 2024. Port-of-Spain Shop­ping Com­plex Ltd (POSS­CL), the com­pa­ny re­spon­si­ble for the shop­ping cen­tres on Char­lotte Street and In­de­pen­dence Square owned by the Gov­ern­ment, pad­locked the doors of the stores and booths be­long­ing to sev­er­al ten­ants who have not been pay­ing their rent. POSS­CL falls un­der the am­bit of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment.

Ten­ants were al­so is­sued pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters by POSS­CL’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and at­tor­ney Aman­da La Caille, who has ad­vised that le­gal ac­tion could be ini­ti­at­ed against them for fail­ing to set­tle out­stand­ing debts. This le­gal let­ter costs each ten­ant $1,000, as the POSS­CL in­sist­ed that nei­ther tax­pay­ers nor the Gov­ern­ment should be sad­dled with this fee.

East­side Plaza has 136 ten­ants while 102 ten­ants rent in New City Mall.  

Chair­man of the POSS­CL Mont­gomery Guy said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to re­cov­er its out­stand­ing debt. Last year, Guy said the POSS­CL held meet­ings with the ten­ants on the mat­ter.

“Some ten­ants for years, they nev­er paid. So we ad­vised that this had to be cor­rect­ed.” Guy said the rent owed by ten­ants be­tween 2015 and Feb­ru­ary 29, 2024, amount­ed to $4.3 mil­lion. The month­ly rental pay­ments range from $353 to $2,870.

In an at­tempt to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, Guy said, the POSS­CL pre­pared new oc­cu­pi­er agree­ments which some ten­ants signed. The ten­ants were in­formed that from Oc­to­ber 1, 2023, the POSS­CL would be col­lect­ing its rent. “It was made clear to ten­ants the need to pay the sub­sidised rent and go­ing for­ward from Oc­to­ber 1, 2023, rents are to be paid con­sis­tent­ly. Ar­rears ow­ing be­fore Oc­to­ber 2023 will be treat­ed with, on a one-on-one ba­sis, in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture, as we wish to con­sid­er the ten­ants’ chal­lenges and work with them,” Guy said.

In Oc­to­ber the POSS­CL no­ticed a ten per cent in­crease in rent pay­ments. The fol­low­ing month it jumped to 34 per cent. How­ev­er, by the end of the year, the pay­ments start­ed to de­cline. “There were some im­prove­ments, but some ten­ants were adamant not to pay. De­spite con­sul­ta­tions and en­gage­ments, some 139 ten­ants (57 at New City Mall and 82 at East­side Plaza) were record­ed as be­ing in ar­rears be­tween Oc­to­ber and De­cem­ber 2023.”

In Jan­u­ary, Guy said, the POSS­CL ad­vised La Caille who al­so pro­vides le­gal sup­port for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, to pre­pare no­tices. The no­tices gave the ten­ants 30 days to clear their ar­rears. But this dead­line was ex­tend­ed to af­ter Car­ni­val.

“We were very le­nient with them,” he added.

Sun­day Guardian re­ceived doc­u­ments show­ing that 28 East­side Plaza ten­ants owed the Gov­ern­ment $509,793.17 from Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber 2023. For the first quar­ter of this year, these ten­ants had al­so not paid their rent amount­ing to $45,497.10.

The doc­u­ments showed that one ten­ant whose month­ly rent was $2,780 was in ar­rears of $109,477.33. An­oth­er ten­ant owed $55,902.40 even though his month­ly rent was a mere $1,098. A ten­ant whose month­ly rent was $257.65 had racked up a $13,272 bill. A fourth ten­ant was ow­ing $41,641.73. Her rent was list­ed as $712.45 a month.

This led to the POSS­CL bolt­ing the doors of 28 ten­ants at East­side Plaza and 27 at New City Mall who had fault­ed in their pay­ments. Asked if there were plans to sell the ten­ants’ goods to re­cov­er the out­stand­ing debt, Guy said this was not on the cards.

He said the board’s po­si­tion was to find ways to work with the ten­ants so they can ho­n­our their com­mit­ment. Guy, who de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “un­ac­cept­able”, said these ten­ants can­not con­tin­ue to live free out of the State. “And what is un­fair is that you are al­so liv­ing off of the rent that oth­er ten­ants are pay­ing, while you sit back and refuse to pay your rent.”

Guy said the le­gal work pro­vid­ed by La Caille was “sep­a­rate and apart from cor­po­rate sec­re­tar­i­al ser­vices as ad­ver­tised na­tion­al­ly.” He al­so dis­closed that all le­gal pay­ments made by the ten­ants will go to La Caille and not in­to the POSS­CL’s cof­fers. “That mon­ey is not com­ing to us be­cause we are not a le­gal com­pa­ny.” Guy said La Caille was hired in 2022 by the POSS­CL with a dual func­tion and did not see her le­gal fees as a con­flict of in­ter­est.

“This is not a con­flict of in­ter­est be­cause we didn’t se­cret­ly say cor­po­rate sec­re­tary you do this.”

Ten­ant says busi­ness slow

On Thurs­day, two East­side Plaza ten­ants Jen­nifer Hosten and Lin­con Grif­fith con­demned the $1,000 le­gal fee im­posed, stat­ing it was un­fair to en­tre­pre­neurs try­ing to sur­vive. “The fee is un­fair be­cause we don’t even make that kind of mon­ey in­side here,” Hosten said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Hosten, 74, op­er­ates a sewing busi­ness at the plaza which she said had lit­tle or no foot traf­fic and sales. Be­tween Feb­ru­ary and March, Hosten set­tled a $3,970 bill and paid the $1,000 le­gal fee for the locks on the door of her shop to be opened.

“Since af­ter the pan­dem­ic you hard­ly see cus­tomers. I am not mak­ing any mon­ey. Some­times I have to dip in my sav­ings to pay my rent,” Hosten said. Two weeks ago, Grif­fith said a lock was placed on the door of his bar­ber shop for ow­ing rent. Hav­ing sought le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter, Grif­fith said he has no in­ten­tion of pay­ing his month­ly $540 rent and the le­gal fee.

“Lock­ing peo­ple out of their place with­out go­ing through the court is not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly right.” Grif­fith be­lieved the POSS­CL ac­tions were “il­le­gal” as they caused him to lose his dai­ly earn­ings.

He said he stopped pay­ing his rent af­ter the POSS­CL an­nounced a few months ago that the plaza was ear­marked for an up­grade and the ten­ants would be shift­ed to an­oth­er build­ing. “That was a set of rob­ber talk.”

Con­tact­ed on Thurs­day, Dayne Fran­cois who has been man­ag­ing East­side Plaza and hold­ing on for Di­ane Hen­drick­son, man­ag­er of New City Mall, said he sup­ports the peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain and the de­vel­op­ment of their busi­ness­es. “I stand in the best in­ter­est of the ten­ants.” Fran­cois steered clear of the le­gal fees be­ing charged. “I had to pre­side over the lock­ing down of sev­er­al booths which was an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion.”