Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will be­gin work­ing out of White­hall on Mon­day, be­com­ing the 6th prime min­is­ter to work in the 115-year-old build­ing.

He made the an­nounce­ment at a re­open­ing cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, as the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter took de­liv­ery of the struc­ture from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT), which had man­aged the ex­ten­sive re­pairs.

“To­day we ac­cept from the con­trac­tors and the UDe­COTT staff, White­hall, which the staff is be­gin­ning to move in­to - and over the week­end they will con­tin­ue - and the prime min­is­ter will work here for the first time next week. Next Mon­day, the prime min­is­ter will come here to work for the first time in a very long, long time,” Dr Row­ley said.

It will be the first time a prime min­is­ter will oc­cu­py White­hall in 10 years. The last prime min­is­ter to work in the build­ing was the late Patrick Man­ning, whom Dr Row­ley suc­ceed­ed as leader of the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in 2010.

It was dur­ing Man­ning’s last tenure as prime min­is­ter, that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter was re­lo­cat­ed to the cur­rent lo­ca­tion at St Clair Av­enue, St Clair in 2009, due to leak­ing roofs and frag­ile floors.

The his­toric build­ing had been oc­cu­pied by all of the coun­try’s prime min­is­ters at some point, ex­cept Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who spent her en­tire term from 2010 to 2015 at the St Clair build­ing.

The restora­tion of White­hall was done at a cost of $32 mil­lion.

Whitehall

Shirley Bahadur

Dur­ing his ad­dress, the prime min­is­ter de­fend­ed the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar cost.

“Sym­bol­ism is im­por­tant, his­to­ry is im­por­tant be­cause it con­nects you to who you are," said Dr Row­ley, who ad­mit­ted that find­ing funds for the project was at times a headache for the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

He praised the team that un­der­took the restora­tion process and not­ed that it was com­prised of a group of young women.

“The men seem to be ab­sent when you need them and the men are un­der­per­form­ing, “ said the prime min­is­ter, “The women are tak­ing us places.”

Dr Row­ley an­nounced that the com­mit­tee to re­store the coun­try’s her­itage build­ings is al­so far ad­vanced with the work on Pres­i­dent’s House.

“In the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture I trust that Her Ex­cel­len­cy would in­vite some of us to the re­oc­cu­pa­tion to an­oth­er icon­ic build­ing, Pres­i­dent’s House, which is to be re­opened and made avail­able for oc­cu­pan­cy in the very near fu­ture,” he said.

The prime min­is­ter added that the cham­bers and floors which cur­rent­ly house the Par­lia­men­tary cham­ber will be con­vert­ed in­to civ­il court­rooms when the Par­lia­ment re­turns to the Red House lat­er this year.

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley chat with members of the Youth Choir at the reopening of White Hall yesterday.

Darren Rampersad

“These civ­il courts will al­low the Hall of Jus­tice to be used sole­ly for crim­i­nal mat­ters,” said Dr Row­ley who added that Cab­i­net ap­proved that process ear­li­er in the day.

Ear­li­er this year, the prime min­is­ter had said the cham­bers would be used by the Sen­ate to fa­cil­i­tate si­mul­ta­ne­ous sit­tings of the Low­er and Up­per House.

He es­ti­mat­ed that $6 mil­lion will be saved by that move and it would aid in the ex­pe­di­tion of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the coun­try.

He said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi would pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the move in the com­ing week.

He said that among the oth­er his­toric build­ings be­ing re­stored are the Red House and the build­ing which used to house the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

The lat­ter build­ing will soon house the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, the prime min­is­ter said.

He al­so ex­plained that restora­tion work on Mille Fleurs, aid­ed by en­gi­neers from Cu­ba, was al­so pro­gress­ing well.

White­hall, orig­i­nal­ly called Rosen­weg, is the sec­ond north­ern­most of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings and was a pri­vate house un­til it was pur­chased by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1954.

Built in 1904, it first be­came the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, oc­cu­pied by Dr Er­ic Williams, in 1963.

This was the third ma­jor restora­tion project car­ried out on the build­ing.