Renu­ka Singh

A new home for the Des­per­a­dos Steel Or­ches­tra could mean ad­di­tion­al for­eign ex­change and a chance for cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell urged the band to make full use of the fa­cil­i­ty at the of­fi­cial sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day at the cor­ner of Nel­son and George Streets, Port-of-Spain.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Row­ley said build­ing the new home for the steel­pan or­ches­tra was part of the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to us­ing cul­ture to con­tribute to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

The new home for Des­per­a­does will cost tax­pay­ers $14 mil­lion and the Prime Min­is­ter urged the group to make sure the in­vest­ment was a worth­while one.

Row­ley al­so urged the band to en­sure that the space is one of safe­ty and one where young peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly young girls, will feel safe.

“If you meet that yard­stick, you would se­cure the fu­ture of this fa­cil­i­ty. If, on the oth­er hand, af­ter we spend all this mon­ey and I sweat as I am sweat­ing now in all this ole talk, when it is built and it is con­crete and gal­vanise and what­ev­er else, that the re­port from this site, if who do what to who and who get shot here and who kill who here, this in­vest­ment would have been wast­ed and it would fail,” the PM said.

Mitchell mean­while hailed the new home of the Des­per­a­dos Steel Or­ches­tra, say­ing that it would gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to “show­case Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rich cul­ture while gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change when tourists vis­it the cap­i­tal city.”

“It gives tourists, vis­i­tors and our lo­cals a chance to im­merse them­selves deep in­to the his­to­ry of the steel­pan, wit­ness its cre­ations and lose them­selves in the melody,” Mitchell said.

The band was ini­tial­ly lo­cat­ed in Laven­tille but moved to Tra­garete Road due to con­cerns over space and safe­ty.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley second from right, on his arrival at the Desperadoes Pan Theatre sod-turning ceremony on Nelson Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday is greeted by Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young, Port-of-Spain, left, south MP Keith Scotland and Tourism and Culture Minister Randall Mitchell.

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Mitchell said the new lo­ca­tion could mean in­creased for­eign ex­change, since as many as 3,000 peo­ple come in­to the city from a cruise ship.

He said it is the min­istry’s in­ten­tion “to ex­pand our op­tions and at­trac­tions for our vis­i­tors, es­pe­cial­ly our cruise vis­i­tors. We are more than Mara­cas Beach and the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens. We wish to give our vis­i­tors an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence our very rich cul­ture and her­itage.”

He said the site could cre­ate “lim­it­less earn­ing po­ten­tial and pos­si­bil­i­ties through sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els.”

“It is my hope for Des­pers that you all un­der­stand and seize these op­por­tu­ni­ties. It is my hope that the pan­dem­ic has al­lowed us and giv­en us am­ple time to re­flect and to es­tab­lish our con­fi­dence that our cul­ture is the rich­est in this re­gion and it is now time to reap what our an­ces­tors have sown,” Mitchell said.

Row­ley al­so ham­mered the need for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion once again.

He said mil­lions of dol­lars in in­fra­struc­ture have been aban­doned in var­i­ous di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion projects that were stopped be­cause of naysay­ers.

He men­tioned the Labid­co site, the pro­posed alu­mini­um smelter plant, Tamana in­dus­tri­al site and the shelved San­dals project in To­ba­go.

“Trinida­di­ans en­cour­age To­bag­o­ni­ans to say no. Right now, there are two ad­di­tion­al ones (San­dals) be­ing built in Ja­maica, two more in Bar­ba­dos, one in St Lu­cia. Grena­da is boom­ing with one and To­ba­go is ask­ing what hap­pened on their way to Cu­ra­cao,” he said.

He said the San­dals project “went up in ole talk.”

“But I am not telling you any­thing new. You would have been hear­ing about the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments and you would have for­got­ten the at­tempts that we have made be­cause we did try,” he said.

He praised the “T&T mod­el” of Point Lisas that was able to ex­port fu­el but ques­tioned the fail­ings of Labid­co, which was sup­posed to be an in­dus­tri­al space mod­elled af­ter the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Desperadoes members perform during the sod-turning ceremony at Nelson Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

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Row­ley said he was in Cab­i­net at the time Labid­co was be­ing built and re­called that $44 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for the project.

“But of course, every­thing you do here, there is some­one to un­do it with coun­ter­points,” he said.

“Every­body will tell you that what this coun­try needs to do is di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, we have been hear­ing that for decades.”

Row­ley said the time to start di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my was now and while past gov­ern­ments did try, it was met with fail­ure “large­ly be­cause of our be­hav­iour and our down­right fool­ish­ness.”

The PM said that the long­stand­ing be­lief that the earn­ings from oil and gas would trick­le down through gov­ern­ment pro­grammes to ben­e­fit gen­er­a­tions may have worked well for the fore-par­ents, but there was a dif­fer­ent re­al­i­ty in the days ahead.

“What we have to do now is stop talk­ing about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and start di­ver­si­fy­ing our econ­o­my, be­cause a day will come when the mar­ket for what we have lived on will not be there, or if it is there, it would not be as sub­stan­tial and sus­tain­able as it used to be,” he said.

He said T&T has got­ten ac­cus­tomed to “liv­ing off oil and gas” and for­got that there was a time when the coun­try sur­vived on sug­ar cane and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.

“We are in that mode now,” he said.