Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

It has cost the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) near­ly $2 mil­lion year­ly for an un­used three-storey build­ing in Trinidad.

The THA rent­ed the build­ing in 2022 with the in­ten­tion of es­tab­lish­ing its pres­ence in Trinidad. How­ev­er, af­ter one year, the as­sem­bly aban­doned the of­fice.

It was put up for rent this month with a month­ly price of $95,000 plus VAT. The un­fur­nished build­ing, at 24-26 Pem­broke Court, Pem­broke Street in Port-of-Spain, has a base­ment that spans across 8,556 square feet of floor space.

The THA orig­i­nal­ly rent­ed the build­ing for $85,000 plus VAT. The in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest.

The con­tract, which was done for three years, start­ed from Ju­ly 1, 2022, with the op­tion to re­new.

Over the first year, with­in the con­tract pe­ri­od, the THA spent $64,260 per month for SWAT Es­tate Po­lice.

A break­down shows this fig­ure in­clud­ed a 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice from Mon­day to Sun­day. The pack­age came with two armed guards on site on every shift.

The as­sem­bly al­so cov­ered a $4,500 T&TEC elec­tric­i­ty bill each month.

In to­tal, it costs THA $1,845,120 on rent and main­te­nance ex­pens­es dur­ing the du­ra­tion of the lease’s first year.

The three-year con­tract was ex­pect­ed to end in Ju­ly 2025—the same year the next THA elec­tions is due.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine was spot­ted vis­it­ing the build­ing in June.

The idea of a “THA em­bassy” in Trinidad was ini­tial­ly pro­posed by Wat­son Duke, the leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP), just be­fore the THA elec­tions on De­cem­ber 6, 2021.

Soon af­ter, Au­gus­tine con­firmed in 2021 that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had been dis­cussing the es­tab­lish­ment of the of­fice at that lo­ca­tion.

The “THA-house” was sup­posed to fall un­der the Of­fice of the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the pur­pose of this of­fice was to pro­vide THA ser­vices to To­bag­o­ni­ans in Trinidad and en­sure that they had ac­cess to their gov­ern­ment, as Au­gus­tine stat­ed in 2022.

From Sep­tem­ber 2022 un­til the con­tract was bro­ken, there had been no ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the build­ing, ex­cept for se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and sched­uled main­te­nance works.

How­ev­er, on Ju­ly 30, a “For Rent” sign was put up at the build­ing’s en­trance.

Duke, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as the deputy chief sec­re­tary, had re­port­ed­ly said in Ju­ly that the THA had giv­en up the build­ing in 2022.

How­ev­er, amidst a pub­lic dis­agree­ment be­tween Au­gus­tine and Duke, Au­gus­tine in­formed re­porters on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, that the THA was in­ter­est­ed in ne­go­ti­at­ing for Pem­broke Place at that time.

Duke re­signed as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, af­ter the week-long, in­tense spat with Au­gus­tine and he was re­placed by Dr Faith B Yis­rael.

Fol­low­ing Duke’s de­par­ture, B Yis­rael was sworn in as the new deputy chief sec­re­tary.

With B Yis­rael tak­ing over from Duke, the THA Trinidad of­fice would have been re­spon­si­ble for lead­ing To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

Dur­ing B Yis­rael’s swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny on Sep­tem­ber 20, Au­gus­tine com­ment­ed on the build­ing’s po­ten­tial us­es.

He stat­ed that he would not re­fer to it as an em­bassy, but rather as a To­ba­go house in Port of-Spain that would serve mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es.

The of­fice would pro­vide the large To­bag­on­ian di­as­po­ra liv­ing in Trinidad with ac­cess to their gov­ern­ment, as well as be re­spon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing, at­tract­ing in­vest­ments, and fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal re­la­tions.