PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

An an­nounce­ment will be made soon con­cern­ing the fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, but dis­cus­sions be­tween the Hilton group and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T are on­go­ing, Min­is­ter of Land & Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said yes­ter­day.

The Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that the Hilton group was con­sid­er­ing re­mov­ing the brand from the ho­tel based on the La­dy Young Hill in Port-of-Spain, due to the fail­ure by the Gov­ern­ment to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ty to in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­at­ing stan­dards, ac­cord­ing to lease agree­ments.

It was al­so con­firmed this week that Ho­sein’s Min­istry was giv­en over­sight of the state-owned Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTeck), which owns the Hilton build­ings and prop­er­ty on be­half of the State. eTeck had pre­vi­ous­ly fall­en un­der the re­mit of the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, led by Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj.

The op­er­a­tional struc­ture gov­ern­ing the ho­tel is based on a lease op­er­a­tor­ship agree­ment dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2003, be­tween eTeck and Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad.

Asked how he was plan­ning to ad­dress the Hilton is­sue, giv­en that it is now part of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Ho­sein said, “So Hilton is just one com­po­nent of eTeck. eTeck has sev­er­al com­po­nents. There’s the in­dus­tri­al parks and so on. With re­spect to that par­tic­u­lar mat­ter, it’s un­der ac­tive de­lib­er­a­tion by the gov­ern­ment. Hilton is al­so in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment. Very soon, both par­ties will make an an­nounce­ment on the way for­ward.”

Ho­sein was speak­ing at the soon-to-be-opened Raw Fit­ness Health Club lo­ca­tion at Icon Plaza in Aranguez. He at­tend­ed the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing for the brand’s new lo­ca­tion in his ca­pac­i­ty as Barataria/San Juan MP.

There was fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion that talks were be­ing held about the ho­tel’s fu­ture in a memo to staff, which post­poned a planned town­hall meet­ing with staff that was due to be held on Thurs­day.

The memo, which was sent hours be­fore the meet­ing was to be held, stat­ed, “As we’ve shared pre­vi­ous­ly, dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment re­main on­go­ing. At this stage, we do not have enough new or con­firmed in­for­ma­tion to en­sure that to­day’s meet­ing would be pro­duc­tive or pro­vide the clar­i­ty you de­serve. We be­lieve it is im­por­tant to meet when we can de­liv­er mean­ing­ful up­dates and ad­dress your ques­tions thor­ough­ly.”

The memo stat­ed the town hall will be resched­uled as soon as more con­crete in­for­ma­tion can be pro­vid­ed.

The fu­ture of the Hilton brand in T&T has drawn con­cern and com­ment from the Op­po­si­tion and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU), which rep­re­sents work­ers at the ho­tel.

CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al, Joanne Ogeer, ex­pressed con­cerns about de­lays in the com­mence­ment and ex­e­cu­tion of the pro­posed re­fur­bish­ment and not­ed that the ho­tel was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing low oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els, af­fect­ing both rev­enue and staffing, with some em­ploy­ees re­ceiv­ing on­ly one day of work per week, a re­flec­tion of re­duced de­mand and con­strained op­er­a­tions.

Mean­while, for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said on Wednes­day that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion had dropped the ball on crit­i­cal re­fur­bish­ments and lease ne­go­ti­a­tions.