BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee dixon@guardian.co.tt

The pro­posed trans­for­ma­tion of the his­toric Nel­son Man­dela Park in­to a pub­lic “Well­ness and Sports Tourism Hub,” is about progress and for­ward-think­ing.

These were the words of Port-of-Spain Deputy May­or Hillan More­an at the Ju­ly 26 pub­lic vir­tu­al con­sul­ta­tion, which were re­it­er­at­ed by may­or at last Fri­day’s Statu­to­ry Meet­ing of the Port-of-Spain City Coun­cil.

This comes on the heels of some stake­hold­ers ex­press­ing their dis­plea­sure with this move.

On so­cial me­dia, users of the age-old pub­lic park have in­di­cat­ed be­ing in favour of pre­serv­ing the his­toric space, while the for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing has said the trans­for­ma­tion would be the “be­gin­ning of an all-out at­tack on the free­dom of use, as­so­ci­at­ed with the 26 parks and squares across the city.”

But de­spite this, Mar­tinez said the feed­back from that con­sul­ta­tion was con­struc­tive.

“Par­tic­i­pants will­ing­ly pro­vid­ed feed­back on the pro­posed changes. We were able to re­ceive some very con­struc­tive in­for­ma­tion and crit­i­cism as to the de­vel­op­ment of the park,” said Mar­tinez.

Speak­ing on the pro­pos­al, Mar­tinez said it was the first time in a long time, the cor­po­ra­tion had been able to put a pro­pos­al to the cit­i­zens of Port-of-Spain re­gard­ing its plans on trans­form­ing the land­scape and great spaces in the cap­i­tal city

The 18-long page pro­pos­al for the $20 mil­lion project, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, which is not yet of­fi­cial­ly pub­lished—speaks re­peat­ed­ly about the ben­e­fit such a fa­cil­i­ty would af­ford the “at risk,” how­ev­er, at the same time it speaks of pri­vatis­ing the fa­cil­i­ty through a pub­lic, pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP), which for­mer Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond said can ac­tu­al­ly work against this de­mo­graph­ic.

Ray­mond said, “Pri­vati­sa­tion and (PPP), can have the ef­fect of lim­it­ing or end­ing the ac­cess to pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties for poor­er cit­i­zens, so we need to have sol­id guar­an­tees of rights to ac­cess, re­gard­less of in­come…of course, that kind of ap­proach is con­trary to a mod­el which re­lies on pay­ing cus­tomers or groups.”

While the spe­cif­ic cost was not in­clud­ed in the pro­pos­al, a charge to use the fa­cil­i­ty was high­light­ed and ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty would re­quire users to book on­line via an on­line sched­ule and book­ing sys­tem, which the pro­pos­al not­ed was al­ready ex­ist­ing for cer­tain sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at the park, name­ly, net­ball, ten­nis, and bas­ket­ball.

Speak­ing on the com­mer­cial el­e­ments of the PPP, Ray­mond said, “This species of project can ap­pear at­trac­tive be­cause no pub­lic in­vest­ment is re­quired up-front and seem­ing­ly no on­go­ing re­cur­rent pay­ments by the pub­lic sec­tor ei­ther. With im­proved fa­cil­i­ties be­ing cre­at­ed, it can all re­sem­ble a win-win-win sce­nario. But the peren­ni­al is­sue with the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ship ap­proach is the ques­tion of risk-trans­fer.”

Ex­plain­ing he said, “In sim­ple terms if the project fails to meet its tar­gets, who pays that gap? Will the State guar­an­tee the pri­vate sec­tor rate of re­turn? If not, well tell us so, be­cause that would be a big im­prove­ment over the PPPs we have had in the past here, many of which are es­sen­tial­ly ‘take-or-pay’ mod­els. If the State is pay­ing to guar­an­tee the pri­vate sec­tor rate of re­turn, what risk have those in­vestors ac­tu­al­ly tak­en, apart from the po­lit­i­cal gam­ble?”

With the con­sul­ta­tion hav­ing tak­en place on­ly on Ju­ly 26, and Mar­tinez call­ing for fi­nal pub­lic com­ment on or be­fore mid­night on Au­gust 1–yes­ter­day Ray­mond said the largest stake­hold­er—the pub­lic, need­ed greater con­sul­ta­tion.

“I un­der­stand that this is an un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­al, which means that it is be­ing con­sid­ered in a non-com­pet­i­tive sit­u­a­tion. A project of this sig­nif­i­cance needs to be wide­ly ad­ver­tised to at­tract the fullest pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion and ex­changes,” said Ray­mond.

He said, if the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion Coun­cil (POSCC) had de­cid­ed fa­cil­i­ties like Man­dela Park need­ed re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion, it would be in­ter­est­ing to know on what ba­sis that de­ci­sion was made.

With the pro­pos­al not yet of­fi­cial­ly pub­lished, Ray­mond ques­tioned what re­al­ly were stake­hold­ers ex­pect­ed to com­ment on.

“Is this an er­ror, an over­sight or are pub­lic of­fi­cials be­ing ob­tuse with us? Is the Port-of-Spain City Coun­cil in­ten­tion­al­ly con­ceal­ing this pro­pos­al? It is no small irony that this is the Nel­son Man­dela Park and that the fi­nal day for pub­lic com­ments is on the Eman­ci­pa­tion Hol­i­day,” Ray­mond said.

The for­mer JCC boss said the is­sue of fake con­sul­ta­tions re­mains a long-term and valid con­cern, which was par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ed as the 17th rec­om­men­da­tion of the 2009 UFF Re­port.

That rec­om­men­da­tion stat­ed the fol­low­ing: “User groups and oth­er in­ter­est groups should be prop­er­ly con­sult­ed on de­ci­sions re­gard­ing pub­lic build­ing projects, to en­sure that rel­e­vant views can be ex­pressed at the ap­pro­pri­ate time and tak­en in­to ac­count be­fore de­ci­sions are made.”