SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

There were mixed re­ac­tions from East Port-of-Spain res­i­dents yes­ter­day to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to re­vi­talise the cap­i­tal city.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day vis­it­ed Pic­cadil­ly Street, which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley iden­ti­fied as one of the ma­jor ar­eas for re­de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley said the Pic­cadil­ly Street De­vel­op­ment has al­ready been brought be­fore the Cab­i­net while Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is as­sured res­i­dents they would not be dis­placed by the de­vel­op­ment.

Robin­son-Reg­is on Mon­day said there was no pro­posed cost for the project yet and she could not say when it might be­gin.

Yes­ter­day, most res­i­dents were hes­i­tant to speak on the record but said they felt ex­cit­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties for change in the city.

Pa­tri­cia Williams, who has lived in East Port-of-Spain for over 35 years, said she would wel­come any pos­i­tive change to the city.

She lament­ed the cur­rent state of the area, say­ing the streets were dirty and un­san­i­tary.

“With all the filthy things around the place, it’s not healthy. We need to see some­thing be­cause we know (for­mer) Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning had that in­ten­tion of do­ing some­thing good here, so if the Prime Min­is­ter (Dr Kei­th Row­ley) want to do some­thing, let him do so, it’s the ben­e­fit for all of us here,” Williams said.

She said the res­i­dents are ea­ger­ly await­ing full de­tails of the project from the Gov­ern­ment.

“I do not know what will hap­pen to the build­ings. He has to tell us about that, but I’m hap­py he is in­ter­est­ed in do­ing some­thing for Port-of-Spain.”

But an­oth­er long­time res­i­dent of Pic­cadil­ly Street, Michael Ed­wards, said he has heard this plan too many times be­fore.

Dur­ing the launch on Mon­day, Row­ley ad­mit­ted this was the 17th plan to re­vi­tal­ize Port-of-Spain but gave mul­ti­ple as­sur­ances his ad­min­is­tra­tion can pull it off.

“They have been say­ing that for many, many years now so I can’t say. I have a neu­tral view on that. What­ev­er they do, they do. Since I here, from ’83 to now, they say they go­ing to de­vel­op, so I can’t say any­thing about that,” Ed­wards said.

Mean­while, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says it will meet next week to dis­cuss the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Cham­ber Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Gabriel Faria, the cham­ber was in­vit­ed to the launch of the project on Mon­day.

He said sev­er­al mem­bers have ex­pressed in­ter­est in part­ner­ing with the Gov­ern­ment. On Mon­day, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing pri­vate in­vestors as the State can­not af­ford the project on its own.

“We do have mem­bers who are in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing but there are al­so those who want to wait out the pan­dem­ic, so we will meet next week to dis­cuss it at length,” Faria said.