Kali­fa Clyne

Nel­son Is­land is ex­pect­ed to be re­stored in time to host an In­di­an Ar­rival Day re-en­act­ment in May. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Min­is­ter of Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Clifton De Coteau. The restora­tion is ex­pect­ed to cost un­der $1 mil­lion, but De Coteau did not give an ex­act fig­ure.

He gave de­tails dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion of in­cen­tive awards to "mar­gin­alised" schools at the min­istry on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.Nel­son Is­land, one of five is­lands off Trinidad's north­west coast in the Gulf of Paria, was used as a quar­an­tine cen­tre for in­den­tured In­di­ans com­ing to work in Trinidad sug­ar­cane fields from May 1845.

De Coteau said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team had been set up to make the re-en­act­ment cer­e­mo­ny a re­al­i­ty. "We plan to vis­it El­lis Is­land, be­cause that is­land was a gate­way to im­mi­grants in Amer­i­ca and they have de­vel­oped a cer­tain amount of self-suf­fi­cien­cy," he added.

El­lis Is­land is off New York City and was the first port of call for im­mi­grants from Eu­rope look­ing for a bet­ter fu­ture in the US. De Coteau felt Nel­son Is­land could be used to gen­er­ate rev­enue to ben­e­fit the econ­o­my.

He said: "We have three main build­ings there: The But­ler house the old hos­pi­tal and a jail house. We will re­store it in the hope that it be­comes hab­it­able. We hope to put pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, a play park and to se­cure the is­land."

The But­ler house is where labour leader Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz" But­ler was de­tained af­ter in­dus­tri­al un­rest in 1937); Restor­ing Nel­son Is­land as a her­itage site is not a new plan, and was to be un­der­tak­en by the Na­tion­al Trust in 2006 with a bud­get of $12 mil­lion. Then, the planned restora­tion in­clud­ed an im­mi­gra­tion of­fice, mu­se­um, a gift shop, an in­for­ma­tion booth, re­strooms and a care­tak­er's house and pub­lic ar­eas.

De Coteau al­so an­nounced a plan to make his min­istry sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for her­itage sites. He is al­so seek­ing to have the restora­tion unit of the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture re­aligned to his min­istry.

At present the Min­istry of Works is re­spon­si­ble for his­tor­i­cal build­ings while De Coteau's min­istry holds the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for her­itage sites and the Min­istry of Wa­ter Re­sources is re­spon­si­ble for the Lopinot her­itage site.

"We have start­ed dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of Tourism and we will en­gage the Min­istry of Works and Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh. We feel strong­ly that if we should have all of them (the her­itage sites) un­der one par­tic­u­lar min­istry we would be able to get greater ef­fi­cien­cy," De Coteau said.

He said his min­istry had re­cent­ly for­ward­ed a list of 381 her­itage sites to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al so that he could add them to the of­fi­cial list of T&T's her­itage sites. "It is our hope that these places can be pro­tect­ed as her­itage sites. Let us main­tain and pre­serve our her­itage," De Coteau said.

He added that the min­istry had start­ed three projects re­cent­ly with the restora­tion and re­fur­bish­ment of Fort San An­dres, the Sug­ar Mu­se­um at Brechin Cas­tle as well as Nel­son Is­land.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Jacintha Bai­ley-Sobers as­sured that the min­istry had been work­ing since its cre­ation in June last year.

"We ini­ti­at­ed a 'flags in every home' project where we gave out 98,000 flags to cit­i­zens. We are re­spon­si­ble for our na­tion­al he­roes and will be go­ing to Cab­i­net in two weeks with a na­tion­al he­roes' pol­i­cy.

"We ex­pect to have a civ­il so­ci­ety board es­tab­lished by April and have been en­gaged in con­sul­ta­tions across the na­tion to see this hap­pen," Bai­ley-Sobers said.