Geisha Kow­lessar

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has sent a stern warn­ing to re­al es­tate own­ers that the State will no longer be fork­ing out mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to rent di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings.

In fact, Row­ley told own­ers the Gov­ern­ment had reached the end of the line and urged busi­ness­men to in­stead build prop­er build­ings and af­ford­able homes to en­cour­age peo­ple to live in the city.

"The peo­ple who may find that they have lost the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rent to State...if your build­ing is sub­stan­dard then tear it down be­cause the gov­ern­ment ain't com­ing back there," Row­ley said.

He made the com­ments af­ter the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Tow­er was opened yes­ter­day at St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, one decade af­ter the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus was con­struct­ed un­der the for­mer Patrick Man­ning regime.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 min­istry em­ploy­ees were ex­pect­ed to move out of the old St Clair fa­cil­i­ty and in­to the tow­er to­day.

The staff, Row­ley said, was forced to scat­ter through­out Port-of-Spain, much in "sub­stan­dard pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties" of which sig­nif­i­cant rent was dished out. He said as the coun­try pro­gressed so too was the need for more pub­lic ser­vants in more lo­ca­tions but pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties were lim­it­ed.

"In the city and else­where, Gov­ern­ment rent­ed from the pri­vate sec­tor and gen­er­at­ed a busi­ness in the pri­vate sec­tor where peo­ple built large­ly with an eye on rent­ing to the Gov­ern­ment but even­tu­al­ly a de­ci­sion had to be tak­en...," Row­ley said.

The PM al­so called on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to pro­vide "rea­son­able hous­ing" with­in Port-of-Spain as there was a pop­u­la­tion de­ple­tion in the city. A re­think­ing of re­al es­tate was ur­gent­ly need­ed to ad­dress that prob­lem, he said, as he the cap­i­tal must be viewed as a "grow­ing, liv­ing eco­nom­ic or­gan­ism.

"One of the rea­sons why there is chron­ic traf­fic jam­ming in­to and out of the city is be­cause there is not enough hous­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion with­in the city that is af­ford­able. This has led to peo­ple reach­ing to work late and leav­ing ear­ly to avoid traf­fic to reach home, re­sult­ing in a tremen­dous loss of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

"But if the city is op­er­at­ing as a city should, hav­ing enough or al­most enough hous­ing with­in the city, many of those peo­ple who are in those traf­fic jams in the morn­ing can be in their beds, wak­ing up lat­er, more rest­ed and go­ing off to work feel­ing most sat­is­fied," Row­ley added.

In­stead, he said the city was al­lowed to be­come run­down and in some in­stances there was de­lib­er­ate ac­tion aimed at re­duc­ing the func­tions of the city.

"Be­cause of gen­er­al ne­glect or lack of care and oth­er agen­das the city has been los­ing pop­u­la­tion con­sis­tent­ly," the PM said, adding this was an in­di­ca­tion Port-of-Spain was not be­ing prop­er­ly op­er­at­ed.

Man­ning laud­ed

Row­ley al­so laud­ed for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's ef­forts to make the cam­pus part of a wider scheme to im­prove the city.

De­scrib­ing yes­ter­day's open­ing as sym­bol­ic, Row­ley said "100 per cent pub­lic sup­port" was not guar­an­teed for any ven­ture em­barked up­on by any gov­ern­ment.

He drew the ex­am­ple of pub­lic crit­i­cism lev­elled against the then gov­ern­ment when the Twin Tow­ers was be­ing con­struct­ed many years ago, adding that there were some mem­bers of the pub­lic who had called for it to be aban­doned amid claims that one of the tow­ers was lean­ing.

Many years lat­er, with con­struc­tion of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus, Row­ley said such build­ings like the Twin Tow­ers would save tax­pay­ers hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in rent.

The prop­er­ties, with its unique tall fea­ture, sym­bol­ised the max­i­mum use of land space with sev­er­al sto­ries, Row­ley added.

"The on­ly way you can build on a prop­er­ty like this is up and that is why the build­ings are tall....you know it was like, Man­ning like tall build­ings,' and some peo­ple would ac­tu­al­ly ar­gue that tall build­ings have a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on you," Row­ley said.

He said a new build­ing for the min­istry was long over­due as em­ploy­ees housed at the St Clair fa­cil­i­ty faced the risk of con­tract­ing lep­tospiro­sis be­cause the build­ing was over­run with rats.

But Row­ley warned the man­age­ment of the new fa­cil­i­ty to en­sure it was prop­er­ly main­tained and that work­ers give their best to the pub­lic. The old build­ing was ex­pect­ed to be torn down but Row­ley said no de­ci­sion has been made as to a re­place­ment.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, mean­while, said yes­ter­day's oc­ca­sion was one of cel­e­bra­tion and joy.

"For some­time now we have been op­er­at­ing in sub­stan­dard con­di­tions at the head of­fice. Staff worked from trun­cat­ed hours, some from 8 to 12 and some from 9 to 1," Gar­cia said.

More in­fo:

The tow­er com­pris­es two build­ings, in­clud­ing a 16-storey of­fice tow­er and five-storey sec­ondary build­ing. The com­bi­na­tion of glass and steel al­lows an im­mense amount of nat­ur­al light to flow in­to the tow­er. The cost of con­struc­tion of the tow­er was ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$320 mil­lion, VAT ex­clu­sive.

Fit-Out, out­stand­ing base build­ing con­struc­tion works, re­pairs to me­chan­i­cal, en­gi­neer­ing, plumb­ing, el­e­va­tors and es­ca­la­tors cost $175,512,405.91, VAT ex­clu­sive.

The to­tal cost of the tow­er: TT$495,512,405.91, VAT ex­clu­sive.