Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

While Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz agrees that all the off­shore is­lands like Car­rera Is­land Prison can be a good ad­di­tion to the coun­try's tourism plan but it will not be a pri­or­i­ty for the min­istry right now.A Sun­day Guardian re­port yes­ter­day not­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty rec­om­mend­ed that up­on the clo­sure of Car­rera Is­land Prison, the fa­cil­i­ty could be turned in­to a tourism site.

The clo­sure of the prison is tar­get­ed for year end where the 300 pris­on­ers would be trans­ferred to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.This was agreed up­on by Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore on March 14. The clo­sure was ini­tial­ly rec­om­mend­ed by In­spec­tor of Pris­ons Daniel Khan. Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty said the fa­cil­i­ty could be used to gen­er­ate rev­enue and stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

The mem­bers said this idea would on­ly bear fruit if the fa­cil­i­ty was owned by the State, pri­vate sec­tor or tax­pay­ers and not for­eign­ers."We could look at de­vel­op­ing these is­lands like Car­rera and Nel­son in­to our tourism plan, but it is go­ing to take a lot of mon­ey to do that, so I do not think it is a pri­or­i­ty right now. We could look at that project for the long term," Cadiz said.He ex­plained that the min­istry must be mind­ful of its spend­ing be­cause the bud­get was very tight.

"We re­ceived a mar­ket­ing bud­get of $72 mil­lion and the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) for tourism is close to $15 mil­lion, so we are fo­cus­ing on im­prov­ing our beach­es in­clud­ing Mara­cas, Tyri­co and Ma­yaro. We need to get these beach­es in bet­ter or­der, un­til we do that I don't see we tak­ing on any oth­er project right now."

How­ev­er, Cadiz said he agreed to the clo­sure of Car­rera Prison.In­ter­viewed yes­ter­day, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Bhoe Tewari said, "Once you free Car­rera Is­land Prison and be­gin the de­vel­op­ment of Nel­son Is­land a lot of new pos­si­bil­i­ties would emerge."Tewari said he sup­port­ed the clo­sure of Car­rera as there was no need for it as a prison.

"Get­ting rid of it is a good idea. It's a cost­ly en­ter­prise and very hard to main­tain and it does not make imag­i­na­tive use of the site by hav­ing a num­ber of peo­ple im­pris­oned there-both pris­on­ers and guards."Tewari said there were a num­ber of things al­ready in train for the de­vel­op­ment of Nel­son Is­land.

Re­count­ing the is­land's his­to­ry, he said it was used for a de­cant­i­ng cen­tre for in­den­tured im­mi­grants in the 19th-cen­tu­ry be­fore hav­ing them land on the main­land of T&T."So there is a his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion there that I think is be­ing ex­plored by the min­istries of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and Di­ver­si­ty."

Sec­ond­ly, he said a lot of re­search has been done on Nel­son by aca­d­e­mics who had looked at it as a po­ten­tial her­itage site.The third thing, he said, is that with­in the 1970's up­ris­ing in T&T, it was used as a prison for dis­si­dents and a num­ber of well-known peo­ple in so­ci­ety-some de­ceased–were de­tained there."So us­ing it as a tourist des­ti­na­tion and his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ment is a very con­struc­tive sug­ges­tion."

He said a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment of Nel­son is a good idea and this could al­so be done for Car­rera."I think if there is pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­est in the mat­ter as well a num­ber of min­istries, aca­d­e­mics and con­ser­va­tion­ists, it would yield a lot of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.Sim­i­lar­ly, he said this could be done to Car­rera.