PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Trinci­ty Mall ten­ants will on Fri­day find out their sta­tus­es on out­stand­ing mall fees for the past two months.

The store own­ers main­tain that the mall’s ini­tial stance to re­quire ten­ants to pay Com­mon Area Main­te­nance (CAM) charges de­spite not be­ing open for busi­ness has fur­ther com­pound­ed their loss­es dur­ing the Stay-at-Home pe­ri­od.

“For the past two months they want us to pay CAM charges, which is a lit­tle bit a lot. They’re try­ing to help but it is a lot when you com­pare you were closed for busi­ness. Noth­ing is com­ing in at all, noth­ing came in at all so that’s a lit­tle too much that they ask­ing them to pay,” said one store own­er.

The CAM charges, Guardian Me­dia was told, can still run up costs of $10,000 and up.

She said that since the re­open­ing, busi­ness has been slow.

“Now that the mall has re­opened, peo­ple com­ing, things com­ing back a lit­tle bit to nor­mal but they not re­al­ly shop­ping as per se as they would shop (be­fore) but peo­ple com­ing in­to the mall. They were home for a cou­ple months, so they glad to get out of the house and the mall is where they com­ing,” the own­er said.

An­oth­er store own­er said many per­sons were com­ing in­to the mall to buy phone cards and pop­corn.

Sev­er­al shops, how­ev­er, have closed for good. One own­er said re­gard­less of what hap­pens for the rest of the year, it is like­ly that his busi­ness will have to seek a cheap­er rental lo­ca­tion in the fu­ture.

One cur­rent ten­ant said his busi­ness pre­vi­ous­ly had three stores in the mall, but due to rental costs they closed two stores and shift­ed to a kiosk.