Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism, Dr Neil Go­sine, says there are plans to reg­u­larise the beach chair ven­dors at Mara­cas Beach.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a brief tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, Go­sine said he could not say how soon this would hap­pen.

Go­sine, along with Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty a week af­ter Alexan­der post­ed a video of a man be­ing beat­en, sup­pos­ed­ly by beach chair ven­dors, on the beach.

“The man­age­ment of the ven­dors, all the ven­dors on the beach, falls un­der the Min­istry of Works, Jear­lean John. There is no for­mal con­tract be­tween the ven­dors and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). At this point in time, it needs to be reg­u­larised, so that is what we are look­ing at. There is a plan, a plan that has been de­vel­oped since 2024,” Go­sine said.

He said the plan was nev­er im­ple­ment­ed and now there is a plan to in­tro­duce it.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter Go­sine, ven­dor Solomon Phillips said the idea was a good one and he was look­ing for­ward to it.

Alexan­der said the rental of chairs, tents and um­brel­las had bal­looned over the years from a few ven­dors to over 20. He said this caused ven­dors to “ex­tort” po­ten­tial cus­tomers. He said reg­u­lar­is­ing the ven­dors should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a way to force them out but to cre­ate a safer en­vi­ron­ment.

“It’s not like we don’t want an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple could make mon­ey and make a liv­ing here, but there has to be a way for it to hap­pen, where it doesn’t feel to the cus­tomers of the beach, the beach­go­ers and the fam­i­lies com­ing here. that it is some­thing that is just forced up­on them,” Alexan­der said.

Alexan­der added that the past ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to im­ple­ment the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion plan, which would be cor­rect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“That is what Dr Go­sine and Min­is­ter John are go­ing to have to work on quick­ly to get that sort­ed out. But a lot of these guys here, we could get them set up prop­er­ly as young busi­ness­men. There’s a lot of in­fra­struc­ture here. We just need to make sure that there’s none of the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty go­ing on that we’ve been told about,” he said.

Go­sine said the fa­cil­i­ty was al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate over the years, af­ter mil­lions were spent to up­grade the vend­ing booths and carpark. He added that the life­guard tow­ers are yet to be built, which is some­thing to be ad­dressed soon.

Beach­go­ers Michelle Sam­my and Sharon Mo­hammed said they did not feel pres­sured or in­tim­i­dat­ed by the sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives who rent­ed them chairs and tents. Sam­my said she had an “Eng­lish mouth” and was not afraid to “put peo­ple in their place”, while Mo­hammed said her daugh­ter was able to ne­go­ti­ate a dis­count from the ven­dors.

Con­tact­ed about the plans to reg­u­larise the ven­dors, for­mer tourism min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said, “There was some­thing that was brought to the at­ten­tion of the min­istry, but it got stuck in the min­istry’s Project and Fa­cil­i­ty Man­age­ment Unit. So noth­ing there was ‘ap­proved’. Ude­cott, how­ev­er, had and still has full au­thor­i­ty over the chair ven­dors.”