Yvonne Ba­boolal

Lo­cal con­trac­tors, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce and Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin are all against grant­i­ng a to­tal­ly-for­eign com­pa­ny a piece of the pie in the de­vel­op­ment of In­vaders Bay. Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing, how­ev­er, is not against the idea. M Fal­con Ltd, a group of over­seas com­pa­nies, has sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for 12 acres of land at In­vaders Bay, Port-of- Spain, to build a three­tow­er med­ical tourism fa­cil­i­ty. Fal­con, in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day, said it had heard through the grapevine that Cab­i­net was not too keen to give an all-for­eign com­pa­ny the green light.

Fal­con in­sists it wants no lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion in its project be­cause its play­ers are all big on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene. Chin al­so has sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for ex­ten­sion of Movi­eTowne and said he would sup­port the Gov­ern­ment 100 per cent in not giv­ing Fal­con land at In­vaders Bay. "I think the Gov­ern­ment is right," he added. Chin said for­eign con­trac­tors did not con­struct build­ings which re­flect­ed the Caribbean. Com­ment­ing on the Hy­att Re­gency, built by a French firm, Gene­va Con­struc­tion, which Fal­con wants to hire to build its tow­ers, Chin said: "I have a prob­lem with the Hy­att. It has no links to T&T. It looks like some­thing out of space." Told that the three tow­ers Fal­con is plan­ning to build are to rep­re­sent sails and will be named af­ter Christo­pher Colum­bus, who named Trinidad in 1498, Chin said: "I beg to dif­fer. They look like alien mon­sters. "They have noth­ing to do with be­ing Caribbean. They are for­eign build­ings re­flect­ing Mi­a­mi. "I call a spade a spade. I may not be liked for it." Chin said he, too, was await­ing the Gov­ern­ment's re­sponse to his pro­pos­al. He said he sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for 38 of In­vaders Bay's 80 acres for his project, Streets of the World, an idea he has been work­ing on since 2006. "You will have a street of In­dia with dou­bles and a tas­sa fac­to­ry; Chi­na­town with drag­on danc­ing, streets of Africa, Ara­bia and Eu­rope," Chin said. The project is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $2 bil­lion and would in­volve a part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment, Chin added. So how are things look­ing for him?

In­sist­ing he is not the re­cip­i­ent of any po­lit­i­cal favours, he replied: "I heard through the grapevine I was one of three se­lect­ed. Noth­ing of­fi­cial." He said if he did not get through he has Movi­eTownes to build in Guyana, Ja­maica, San Fer­nan­do and in east Trinidad. Cather­ine Ku­mar, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, said the cham­ber was all for lo­cal con­tent. She said: "We sup­port all ma­jor con­tracts that have some lo­cal con­tent. Even the Pro­cure­ment Bill calls for lo­cal con­tent in all con­tracts. "We are not against for­eign in­vest­ment, but there must be some lo­cal con­tent in­volved." Mikey Joseph, Con­trac­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion di­rec­tor, said about Fal­con's pro­pos­al: "Ab­solute­ly not! We can't just give our na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny to for­eign­ers. What is the ben­e­fit to the coun­try?" Joseph said the ten­der­ing process be­ing used for In­vaders Bay was il­le­gal. "The Cen­tral Ten­ders Board should set out the Re­quests for Pro­pos­als, not a gov­ern­ment min­istry," he said. Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing said he did not know if "we ought to dis­cour­age" the all-for­eign in­vestors. "What if a group of cit­i­zens go to the US and want to open a chain of roti shops and de­clare they on­ly want Tri­nis in­volved, and the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion says they must have 50 per cent par­tic­i­pa­tion by Amer­i­cans?" he asked.