Kali­fa Clyne

Gov­ern­ments have done noth­ing to fix the sig­nif­i­cant dam­age wrought on Port-of-Spain's busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as a re­sult of the 1990 coup at­tempt.This was not­ed in the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.The doc­u­ment, avail­able to the pub­lic on the T&T Par­lia­ment's Web site, said the Port-of-Spain busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had suf­fered loss­es of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $450 mil­lion.The re­port said "busi­ness and com­merce in Port-of-Spain were clear­ly neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the in­sur­rec­tion."

"Ar­son and loot­ing caused loss­es es­ti­mat­ed by us, on the ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $450,000,000."The re­port blamed the neg­a­tive change in the na­ture and cul­ture of the cap­i­tal city's busi­ness on the de­struc­tion which oc­curred in the city at that time."Where­as, pri­or to 1990, Port-of-Spain was a de­sir­able cen­tre of shop­ping for Caribbean per­sons, af­ter 1990, all that changed."

"As a con­se­quence, large num­bers of shop­pers from neigh­bour­ing is­lands have sought oth­er des­ti­na­tions, while the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion has re­sort­ed to the sev­er­al shop­ping malls which grew up as one of the con­se­quences of the events of in 1990."The re­port de­scribed the ini­tia­tives of the NAR gov­ern­ment to as­sist the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as "well in­ten­tioned but so com­plex as not to have been at­trac­tive."

"We re­ceived no ev­i­dence that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments ever fol­lowed up those ini­tia­tives or pro­vid­ed any oth­er form of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to as­sist the suf­fer­ing busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty."Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma), Gre­go­ry Aboud said past and present gov­ern­ments had failed to make even sim­ple pol­i­cy changes that would have as­sist­ed ion the growth of busi­ness in the cap­i­tal city.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Aboud said sim­ple pol­i­cy de­ci­sions re­gard­ing park­ing and se­cu­ri­ty would have ben­e­fit­ed the city."In this case we can point a very strong fin­ger at the Sal­va­tori site which could eas­i­ly have pro­vid­ed much need­ed re­lief to the city's chron­ic short­age of park­ing," said Aboud.He said this had to be analysed from the point of view that busi­ness­es had not asked for fi­nan­cial grants nor re­quest­ed any kind of sub­ven­tions or con­ces­sions oth­er than the use of a va­cant lot.

"Not on­ly was this de­nied but it was de­nied at the same time that po­lice be­gan their mer­ci­less wreck­ing sys­tem."Aboud said the 1990 coup at­tempt re­sult­ed in a loss of trust in the over­all process of gov­er­nance.He not­ed that in ad­di­tion to the city be­ing aban­doned on the night of Ju­ly 27, 1990, no one was held to ac­count for the ab­ject law­less­ness of the loot­ing which took place nor the ac­tu­al event of the coup at­tempt it­self.