Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Six­teen ven­dors at the pop­u­lar Saly­bia beach in To­co are call­ing on the ti­tle own­ers of the land they have been on for the last 16 years to come for­ward to hear their woes.

Their ap­peal comes af­ter the pow­er to their shops was dis­con­nect­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion two weeks ago. The ven­dors now fear that the next step will be their stalls be­ing dis­man­tled by the landown­er and them be­ing evicit­ed from the space.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the land cur­rent­ly falls un­der the Whar­ton Es­tate and has been leased un­til 2073.

Boni­fa­cio Vial­va, a ven­dor and ser­vice provider at the beach for over 16 years, told Guardian Me­dia, “What is hap­pen­ing here is that T&TEC re­cent­ly came and cut the lights of 16 ser­vice providers for the beach. Even be­fore they came there was no meet­ing to in­form, but they just told us that they were ter­mi­nat­ing our pow­er sup­ply but we nev­er saw any doc­u­ments, be­cause it is al­leged that some­one came and showed doc­u­ments to T&TEC as the in­her­it­ed own­er and based on that, T&TEC act­ed.”

He said the ven­dors had no oth­er av­enue to make mon­ey and with the cur­rent chal­lenges fac­ing peo­ple in the coun­try, they were hop­ing for a res­o­lu­tion.

“Right now, we need to have a di­a­logue to move for­ward. These peo­ple here, this is the on­ly place that they have a busi­ness and feed their fam­i­lies, we don’t want these peo­ple to turn to do­ing ills, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing out of COVID-19 and we did not com­plain or ac­cess any grants,” he said.

Not­ing that they pro­vide an im­por­tant ser­vice to many vis­it­ing the pop­u­lar To­co beach, Vial­va urged To­co/San­gre Grande MP Roger Munro to come to their as­sis­tance, adding they be­lieve his in­ter­ven­tion can be of as­sis­tance.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ven­dors got an elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply through a for­mer min­is­ter and the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don said, “Eleven years ago, I start­ed to ne­go­ti­ate with the then five ven­dors on this beach with the Min­istry of Tourism and then Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz to at­tempt to ac­quire the land. The land they are on has an own­er and it is owned by the Whar­ton Es­tate and I asked the min­is­ter at the time to ne­go­ti­ate with the own­ers. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment changed and it nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.”

He added, “I am ask­ing the own­er of the land to meet with the peo­ple and if they can lease or sell it to them or come up with a so­lu­tion, or for the Gov­ern­ment to pur­chase the land and up­grade the area to what we see in Mara­cas. These peo­ple are mak­ing an hon­est liv­ing and it hurts to see what is hap­pen­ing here.”