Gov­ern­ment's draft es­ti­mates for 2012 showed that the cost of the build­ing which now hous­es the Trinidad and To­ba­go Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton DC was US$11mil­lion. The draft es­ti­mates al­so showed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$700,000 was al­lo­cat­ed for re­fur­bish­ing the em­bassy.

T&T Am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton Dr Neil Parsan was again un­avail­able for com­ment yes­ter­day on the ex­ten­sive ren­o­va­tions re­cent­ly car­ried out at the em­bassy. The em­bassy is fea­tured in the Ju­ly/Au­gust is­sue of US ar­chi­tec­tur­al mag­a­zine Home and De­sign, show­cas­ing some seem­ing­ly ex­pen­sive up­dates to the prop­er­ty.

Deputy chief of mis­sion, Don­na Hen­ry, said all ques­tions about ren­o­va­tions should be re­ferred to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. When asked if ques­tions from the me­dia were al­ways re­ferred to the min­istry, Hen­ry said: "In this par­tic­u­lar in­stance your en­quiries should be di­rect­ed to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs."

The am­bas­sador's as­sis­tant said e-mails sent by the T&T Guardian to the am­bas­sador's at­ten­tion were nev­er re­ceived. The em­bassy, on Em­bassy Row, at 1708 Mass­a­chu­setts Av­enue, Wash­ing­ton, DC, un­der­went ex­ten­sive ren­o­va­tions start­ing short­ly af­ter Parsan took of­fice in Feb­ru­ary 2011.