Zahra Gor­don

Rawle Mitchell, head of the his­tor­i­cal restora­tion unit in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, says re­pairs to Queen's Roy­al Col­lege are com­ing soon.He was re­spond­ing to a state­ment made by the school's prin­ci­pal Lennard Hink­son last Wednes­day that QRC was falling apart.QRC was built in 1904 and is one of the his­toric Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. A restora­tion project was com­plet­ed at QRC in 2010.

On Wednes­day, Hink­son told an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al group tour­ing the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings his many calls and let­ters to the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture went with­out re­sponse.When the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed Mitchell he said he had re­ceived Hink­son's let­ters but not­ed the min­istry had to ad­dress the mat­ter care­ful­ly.

Mitchell said the min­istry was speak­ing with the de­sign con­sul­tant and con­trac­tor on the project about rec­ti­fy­ing the prob­lems. He said he would have to look through doc­u­ments to name the ex­act prob­lems the school was fac­ing.The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed the main build­ing of QRC had is­sues of wa­ter dam­age and pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion.

Mitchell said the main­te­nance of the school was up to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion while de­fects in the build­ing were the con­trac­tor's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's me­dia re­la­tions co-or­di­na­tor Yolan­da Morales Car­val­ho said all projects re­lat­ed to QRC's main build­ing were the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture.

Mitchell said be­cause QRC was more than 100 years old, it would re­quire high main­te­nance, and that some of the prob­lems were be­cause the build­ing was a school, where lots of ac­tiv­i­ties took place.He could not say how soon the con­sult­ing stage would be fin­ished and when the con­trac­tor would ac­tu­al­ly start to ad­dress is­sues at QRC.

Pres­i­dent of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion Rudy­lynn Roberts, a con­ser­va­tion ar­chi­tect, said QRC ob­vi­ous­ly re­quired more care­ful main­te­nance than oth­er schools be­cause of its his­tor­i­cal val­ue.She added that the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en were not on­ly sig­nif­i­cant to T&T but the en­tire Caribbean, and whether the build­ings were pri­vate­ly or pub­licly owned, Gov­ern­ment should have sys­tems in place to en­sure main­te­nance.