SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Next week, the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC) may find it­self with­out a roof over its head, as the cor­po­ra­tion has been giv­en no­tice to va­cate the ground floor of the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS) Plaza in Aranguez, which it has been rent­ing as its of­fice for decades.

As the May 31, 2026, dead­line to va­cate the prop­er­ty looms, the chair­man of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion, Richard Wal­cott, ex­pressed fears of be­ing evict­ed.

“By next week­end, we will be on the street,” Wal­cott told the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing a re­cent tele­phone in­ter­view.

Fear­ing the worst, Wal­cott promised to pitch tents on the pave­ment out­side the MTS build­ing to ac­com­mo­date the cor­po­ra­tion’s 300 staff.

“To date, the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has not been able to give us any in­for­ma­tion as to whether our pro­pos­al for suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tion has been ap­proved by Cab­i­net. By next week­end, we will be on the streets. At this time, every­body is in pan­ic mode.”

Wal­cott said calls and What­sApp mes­sages to Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen’s cell phone have gone unan­swered.

“I am view­ing it now as a po­lit­i­cal game be­cause the min­is­ter is not do­ing any­thing about it.”

He said coun­cil mem­bers are en­raged by the sit­u­a­tion.

“My coun­cil­lors are ready to hit the street. They are ready to go to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and demon­strate in front of the build­ing.”

The no­tice of ter­mi­na­tion was served to the cor­po­ra­tion’s CEO, Sher­ma Ed­wards-Joe­field, in a let­ter dat­ed May 1, 2026, from MTS’s act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Lana Lakhan.

The let­ter in­formed the CEO that the lease agree­ment had ex­pired on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, yet the cor­po­ra­tion con­tin­ued to oc­cu­py the premis­es as a “month-to-month” ten­ant.

“MTS now in­tends to ter­mi­nate this ten­an­cy, and you are here­by giv­en one month’s no­tice of this in­ten­tion. You are there­fore re­quired to va­cate the premis­es, cease car­ry­ing on the busi­ness of lo­cal gov­ern­ment on the sub­ject premis­es and set­tle all out­stand­ing rent pay­ments on or be­fore May 31, 2026,” the no­tice stat­ed.

Wal­cott al­leged that as soon as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress came in­to pow­er, they de­cid­ed to evict them.

MTS, a ful­ly owned state en­ter­prise, has planned us­age for the space the cor­po­ra­tion rents.

“The Gov­ern­ment put out a gov­ern­ment agency…that is what is tak­ing place now,” he said.

Since April of 1997, the cor­po­ra­tion has been pay­ing MTS a month­ly rent of $87,942.94 for the prop­er­ty.

Over the last 29 years, the cor­po­ra­tion has spent over $30 mil­lion in rent.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so rents an­oth­er build­ing in Aranguez for a month­ly fee of $14,000 to ac­com­mo­date staff in the Lit­ter War­den’s Of­fice.

Al­to­geth­er, their month­ly rent to­tals $101,942.94.

Crit­i­cal op­er­a­tional risk

In a let­ter dat­ed May 14, 2026, the cor­po­ra­tion re­spond­ed to MTS, stat­ing that they were fac­ing some dif­fi­cult times and re­quired fur­ther dis­pen­sa­tion of their grace.

The cor­po­ra­tion ex­plained that since re­ceiv­ing the no­tice to va­cate the premis­es, “our ef­forts, though tena­cious, are in­ad­e­quate to com­ply with your man­date, giv­en the nec­es­sary process­es which must be un­der­tak­en to re­lo­cate our op­er­a­tions.”

Out­lin­ing the predica­ment, the cor­po­ra­tion asked MTS for a three-month ex­ten­sion to fa­cil­i­tate its re­lo­ca­tion, as it had eval­u­at­ed sev­er­al prop­er­ties.

MTS did not com­ply with the re­quest.

Wal­cott said he wrote to Ameen about us­ing the cor­po­ra­tion-owned Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme build­ing in Mt Hope for their mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers, but re­ceived no re­ply.

With time run­ning out, Ed­wards-Joe­field penned a let­ter dat­ed May 15, 2026, to the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Pe­ter Mitchell, seek­ing ap­proval to oc­cu­py Roo­sevelt Place sit­u­at­ed at Jat­tan Lane, San Juan, as its new ad­min­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters.

The let­ter stat­ed that Roo­sevelt Place has the ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date its staff and was the on­ly vi­able op­tion for its busi­ness.

“The month­ly cost of rent­ing the Roo­sevelt Build­ing is $263,000,” Ed­wards-Joe­field in­formed Mitchell.

The CEO al­so in­formed Mitchell that the cor­po­ra­tion had iden­ti­fied an avail­able al­lo­ca­tion of $2.2 mil­lion for cap­i­tal projects.

How­ev­er, this al­lo­ca­tion was orig­i­nal­ly des­ig­nat­ed for the con­struc­tion of a new mu­nic­i­pal po­lice sta­tion to be ex­e­cut­ed by the min­istry un­der the In­fra­struc­ture and De­vel­op­ment Fund.

“It is the rec­om­men­da­tion, there­fore, that a re­quest be made to the Min­istry of Fi­nance for a trans­fer of funds from the cap­i­tal projects (not yet com­menced) to rent/lease of­fice ac­com­mo­da­tion and stor­age.”

Ed­wards-Joe­field ad­mit­ted that the cor­po­ra­tion was fac­ing a crit­i­cal op­er­a­tional risk with MTS’s no­tice.

The let­ter al­so brought to Mitchell’s at­ten­tion that on June 1, 2026, the SJL­RC would as­sume that the prop­er­ty would be legal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly seized, staff would not be al­lowed en­try and all op­er­a­tions would be put on pause.

Re­spond­ing to Wal­cott’s claims yes­ter­day, Ameen, in a What­sApp mes­sage to the Sun­day Guardian, said she was ful­ly ap­prised of the mat­ter.

She said the re­quest by Wal­cott for the URP build­ing was for em­ploy­ees to park their ve­hi­cles there and not the re­lo­ca­tion of their of­fices.

“And in any case, that space is not suit­able for their of­fices. We are cur­rent­ly work­ing on the mat­ter, so much so that my PS vis­it­ed an al­ter­na­tive build­ing with them, and they should be re­lo­cat­ed soon.”