Kali­fa Clyne

The founders of the Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary Mu­se­um are call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ei­ther run the site it­self or in­crease fund­ing. Lin­da Kelshall, who runs the mu­se­um, says it had re­ceived a sub­ven­tion from the Cul­ture Min­istry since 2000 and start­ed re­ceiv­ing mon­ey for a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme a few years lat­er.

But in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Kelshall said the min­istry had called her to a meet­ing ear­ly this year and told her the de­vel­op­ment fund­ing would be cut. "We had start­ed to build a li­brary be­cause some of the books we had were de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. With the de­vel­op­ment mon­ey gone, we can't fin­ish it now," Kelshall said.

"We had al­ready cred­it­ed sup­plies from the hard­ware and now we have to wor­ry about re­pay­ing them," she said. Kelshall said Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters vis­it­ed the mu­se­um last year and promised to of­fer more help. "In­stead, they took away mon­ey and that left us in a lot of pres­sure," said Kelshall.

She said that made it even more dif­fi­cult for her since her hus­band, Gay­lord, got sick she has been run­ning the mu­se­um her­self. "I am left with no choice but to ask the Gov­ern­ment to take over. I tried to beg and do things to find mon­ey but it isn't work­ing," said Kelshall. The Kelshalls have run the mu­se­um for 22 years.

Kelshall said the sub­ven­tion from the min­istry was $200,000 a year and the de­vel­op­ment fund­ing was $250,000. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Vel Lewis, de­nied the mu­se­um's fund­ing had been cut.

He said the de­vel­op­ment fund­ing was for pro­posed projects at the mu­se­um. He added: "The project that we had grant­ed fund­ing for, which was for a li­brary, should have been com­plet­ed. "If they need­ed more mon­ey they would have need to sub­mit an­oth­er pro­pos­al. A de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme does not go on for­ev­er."

Lewis said some of the col­lec­tions at the mil­i­tary mu­se­um held na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. "I feel the State would con­sid­er tak­ing over the mu­se­um," Lewis said. Pe­ters could not be reached for com­ment. The Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Avi­a­tion Mu­se­um was found­ed in 1990 by Gay­lord Kelshall, a for­mer pi­lot and of­fi­cer in the T&T Coast Guard.

It pro­vides his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion on T&T's par­tic­i­pa­tion in World Wars I and II. On ex­hib­it are mil­i­tary planes and au­to­mo­biles, am­mu­ni­tion and uni­forms. Kelshall said the mu­se­um al­so ex­hib­it­ed mem­o­ra­bil­ia from the 1990 coup at­tempt.