RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

One of San Fer­nan­do’s most promi­nent busi­ness fam­i­lies has re­ceived the keys to the city for their ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in the in­dus­tri­al cap­i­tal.

The Mack fam­i­ly, own­ers of JT Al­lum Group of Com­pa­nies and San Fer­nan­do’s newest mall the C3 Cen­tre, re­ceived the keys from San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo dur­ing a func­tion at the City Hall au­di­to­ri­um on Fri­day night.

Chair­man Emer­i­tus Carl Mack ac­cept­ed the keys, while ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the JT Al­lum Group of Com­pa­nies Christo­pher Mack ex­pressed grat­i­tude on be­half of his fam­i­ly for re­ceiv­ing the city’s high­est ho­n­our.

Min­is­ter of Trade Paul Gopee-Scoon said the ho­n­our was de­serv­ing as the Mack fam­i­ly had giv­en cit­i­zens T&T’s best mall.

“Now many of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are mov­ing be­yond the Light­house and thou­sands have come just to be at C3 Cen­tre. You have added re­al es­tate val­ue to San Fer­nan­do. The city’s bound­aries now start at the C3 Cen­tre and you have raised the val­ue of re­al es­tate in that area. I ap­plaud your busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She com­mend­ed the old­er gen­er­a­tions of the Mack fam­i­ly for ed­u­cat­ing their chil­dren well and in­te­grat­ing them in­to the busi­ness.

“I com­mend the new heads of the busi­ness­es. They will con­tin­ue to ex­pand the busi­ness land­scape in San Fer­nan­do. I sus­pect they may stay true to San Fer­nan­do and nev­er en­ter in Port-of-Spain but that’s okay. There is some­thing about sim­ple-mind­ed­ness that serves us well in busi­ness,” she said.

May­or Re­grel­lo al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the Macks say­ing the fam­i­ly de­served spe­cial recog­ni­tion.

“The sym­bol­ism of the key to the city is root­ed in trust, ho­n­our and the recog­ni­tion of com­mit­ment and re­spect shown to those who were giv­en this aus­pi­cious ho­n­our. Per­sons who have be­stowed the keys to the city are con­sid­ered to be true friends who would seek the in­ter­est of the city and its in­hab­i­tants. In this re­gard, there can be no greater ex­em­plars who per­son­i­fy these ideals than the JT Al­lum Com­pa­ny and the Mack Fam­i­ly,” he said.

Re­grel­lo said the growth of the JTA Group was syn­ony­mous with the de­vel­op­ment of San Fer­nan­do.

“This rich his­to­ry adds and mag­ni­fies the essence of en­tre­pre­neur­ship that has in­ter­twined in­to the iden­ti­ty that pro­ject­ed JTA as a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to San Fer­nan­do’s econ­o­my. This icon­ic San Fer­nan­do busi­ness sto­ry en­cap­su­lates the di­ver­si­ty that lies at the very soul of San Fer­nan­do,” he said.

He said the fam­i­ly has al­ways sup­port­ed San Fer­nan­do’s de­vel­op­ment.

Christo­pher Mack said the com­pa­ny has been part of the land­scape of San Fer­nan­do for 85 con­tin­u­ous years and is one of the old­est busi­ness groups in T&T.

“I hope hav­ing the keys to the city will speed up the ap­proval process­es. I am cog­nizant that this is the high­est ho­n­our,” he said, adding that the JT Al­lum Group will con­tin­ue to up­hold its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ad­vance­ment of the city.