Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Sev­er­al ven­dors have voiced con­cerns that Gov­ern­ment's plan to con­struct a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar "dou­bles pavil­ion" in the thriv­ing town of Debe will de­stroy their liveli­hood. They are wor­ried that ad­di­tion­al vend­ing booths will gen­er­ate un­nec­es­sary com­pe­ti­tion while oth­ers be­lieve that the Point Fortin to San Fer­nan­do high­way, now un­der con­struc­tion, will reroute traf­fic out of Debe.

Ly­ing along the SS Erin Road be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Pe­nal, the agri­cul­tur­al town of Debe has at least five eas­i­ly recog­nis­able stalls which cater to thou­sands of peo­ple on any giv­en day. Lovers of In­di­an del­i­ca­cies flock to the strip to pur­chase dou­bles, aloo (pota­to) pies, bhaiganie, ka­chourie, an­char and an as­sort­ment of sweets.

Among the more pop­u­lar stalls are Kr­ish­na's Food Cen­tre, Has­sanali's "Green Shed," Singh's In­di­an Del­i­ca­cies, Ho­sein's Shed and "The Blue Shed" which been in ex­is­tence for al­most 80 years. The road­side food court was first up­grad­ed in 1996, un­der MP Trevor Su­dama.

Speak­ing from in­side her stall yes­ter­day, Zeena Ho­sein said there was no need for fur­ther up­grades. "We com­fort­able now. If they build this pavil­ion and put up eight more stalls, we will have com­pe­ti­tion. What they do­ing this for?" Ho­sein said.

She said some of the ven­dors were al­ready strug­gling to pay loans re­lat­ed to their busi­ness.

"I don't think this is a good idea at all," she added. Sweets ven­dor Rad­ha Mo­hammed al­so said now was not an op­por­tune time to cre­ate a "dou­bles pavil­ion." While she agreed that in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing of the lo­cal del­i­ca­cy would gen­er­ate more rev­enue, Mo­hammed said ven­dors were fear­ful that the new high­way would di­vert cus­tomers.

"Peo­ple will take the high­way and by­pass us. We don't think that putting more stalls here will be good." How­ev­er, an­oth­er ven­dor, Rose­marie Has­sanali, said com­pe­ti­tion would be good and would force ven­dors to im­prove their stan­dards. Has­sanali said while the qual­i­ty of Debe dou­bles was im­pec­ca­ble, there was a need for bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties for the pub­lic: park­ing, wash­room fa­cil­i­ties and reg­u­la­tion of traf­fic.

"I am not afraid of com­pe­ti­tion," Has­sanali de­clared, adding that the Debe dou­bles pavil­ion will show­case T&T's del­i­ca­cies in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Amit Singh, who al­so runs a stall, said the pavil­ion will al­so gen­er­ate rev­enue for oth­er busi­ness­es in the area. Singh said he has been able to com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly against his neigh­bours by pro­vid­ing dine-in fa­cil­i­ties.

Fa­reed Ali, a vis­i­tor from Toron­to, Cana­da, said the Gov­ern­ment's plan should be com­mend­ed. He said he al­ways vis­its Debe for dou­bles when­ev­er he is in Trinidad, adding that such a project will put T&T on the map. An­oth­er vis­i­tor, Khair­ul Karim, al­so agreed the project would be ben­e­fi­cial to the com­mu­ni­ty of Debe, which has a pop­u­la­tion of over 3,000 peo­ple.

On Thurs­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith an­nounced that tourism up­grades will be done on Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Wood­brook and Debe. The Debe project will en­com­pass a new block for the ex­ist­ing ven­dors, as well as ac­com­mo­da­tion for eight oth­ers.