After spending close to $50 million in repairs to the Vanguard Hotel in Tobago since its purchase by the State in 2006 at a cost of $300 million, taxpayers now have to expend a further $150 million to make the hotel fully operational by November 1. This was revealed by the Minister of Trade and Industry Stephen Cadiz in his capacity as guest speaker at a business luncheon series hosted by the Trinidad Union Club. The luncheon, which took place at the Nicholas Towers in Port-of-Spain on Monday, had among its attendees Ambassador Extraordinaire and Plenipotentiary with responsibility for Trade and Industry Mervyn Assam, permanent secretary in the ministry Carl Francis and president of the Trinidad Union Club Brett Hobday.
"Between 2006 and now, close to $50 million was spent and now we have to find $150 million to get the Vanguard up and running as a functional hotel by November 1 of this year," Cadiz said. "If we allow the Vanguard Hotel to stay in the condition that it is in, then you will have a major problem with tourism because the airlifts coming into Tobago is going to suffer." He attributed the "$50 million" expense to both structural repairs and recurring expenditure for the upkeep of the facility which he estimated to be $200,000 per month. Cadiz blamed the former government (People's National Movement) for this. He accused the PNM of mismanaging the nation's finances in its failure to refurbish hotels in a timely fashion. In this regard, he alluded to the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, which he said had cost the public purse the value of a new structure when it commenced repairs in 2004. "It its 40-year history, there was never a full blown refurbishment at the Hilton and in the hotel business, the benchmark for such work is every ten years," Cadiz said.
"So structural works on the Hilton started at $200 million in 2004, it immediately goes to $450 million and we still have to find now another $150 million which will bring the total expense to $650 million to make the hotel functional." Cadiz said the Government could have "put up a brand new hotel" with the same money and "got a much better deal" had they (PNM) not undergone repairs to the hotel. He said while the public can be assured that the People's Partnership was "very hard at work," the task of "unravelling 50 years of issues" remained a "massive" one. "There is a huge ball that we have to untangle to provide good governance," Cadiz added.
