In the­o­ry, there are few na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go who would have a prob­lem with the Gov­ern­ment spend­ing US$211,420 ($1,365,773) on the ren­o­va­tions of this coun­try's em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton DC. The ren­o­va­tions be­came nec­es­sary be­cause in 2009, un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Gov­ern­ment ac­quired the build­ing next door to the em­bassy, which has been lo­cat­ed at 1708 Mass­a­chu­setts Av­enue since 1973, for the sum of US$12 mil­lion ($77 mil­lion). The in­ten­tion was to con­vert the two build­ings in­to one ex­pand­ed chancery.

In mat­ters like this, the is­sue is al­ways did the coun­try re­ceive val­ue for the mon­ey spent on ac­quir­ing and ren­o­vat­ing the premis­es on Mass­a­chu­setts Av­enue. It is safe to as­sume that the ex­pand­ed chancery will be for many more years the seat of this coun­try's rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the cap­i­tal of the Unit­ed States, a coun­try which is still a glob­al su­per­pow­er and with which T&T has close trad­ing and in­vest­ment links.

Note has been tak­en of the state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs that the pur­chase of the build­ing and the ren­o­va­tions were "in­vest­ments, ex­pect­ed to save fi­nan­cial re­sources in the long-term and the as­sets, which are housed in a prime lo­ca­tion, are pro­ject­ed to ap­pre­ci­ate in val­ue."

This is the mind­set that should dri­ve all of the build­ings owned by the State-whether with­in the bound­aries of the na­tion or in the for­eign cities in which T&T has diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion. All state-owned build­ings-in­deed, all state-owned prop­er­ty-should be treat­ed as in­vest­ments, which should be main­tained up to a high stan­dard so that gen­er­a­tions com­ing af­ter us will be able to en­joy them the same way that we have.

This con­cept of think­ing of state-owned prop­er­ty as in­vest­ments that are be­ing held in trust for all the peo­ple of T&T and which should ap­pre­ci­ate in val­ue is a use­ful place to start in as­sess­ing the Gov­ern­ment's ap­proach to some oth­er build­ings. A sto­ry yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed that three of the hous­es around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah known as the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en were in a se­ri­ous state of dis­re­pair with no holis­tic restora­tion plan in place.

An­oth­er sto­ry in yes­ter­day's Guardian in­di­cat­ed that two years af­ter the roof of Pres­i­dent's House col­lapsed, the work of ren­o­vat­ing that his­toric build­ing has stopped-with no clear sig­nal as to when the work would re­sume. In the sto­ry of Pres­i­dent's House, for­mer Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Colm Im­bert, said that he was al­ways "strug­gling with bu­reau­cra­cy in get­ting funds to un­der­take the restora­tion of his­tor­i­cal build­ings."

It must be as­sumed that giv­en the fail­ure of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to progress the ma­jor ren­o­va­tion work at Pres­i­dent's House and the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en that this strug­gle con­tin­ues. It is in­ter­est­ing and note­wor­thy that mon­ey can be found and work or­ders ap­proved to ren­o­vate the T&T em­bassy in the US, but his­toric build­ings in T&T are be­ing al­lowed to lan­guish or fall apart with lit­tle con­cern be­ing shown by the Gov­ern­ment.

It can­not be that the Wash­ing­ton DC build­ing is an as­set that will ap­pre­ci­ate over time, while the Port-of-Spain build­ings-which are of much greater his­toric val­ue-are dis­missed as li­a­bil­i­ties for which min­is­ters have to en­gage in "strug­gling with bu­reau­cra­cy" to get ren­o­va­tion funds.

The Gov­ern­ment needs to treat all state-owned prop­er­ties as though they are in­vest­ments re­quir­ing ma­jor ren­o­va­tion every decade and an an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get for main­te­nance. There must be a prop­er in­ven­to­ry of State build­ings and a con­sis­tent record of the ren­o­va­tion and main­te­nance work done on them. Then, maybe, the coun­try can start to think in terms of get­ting a re­turn on the in­vest­ment in the de­ci­sion by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion to boost T&T's build­ing stock.