Kali­fa Clyne

The Gov­ern­ment needs to en­sure that five his­toric build­ings it in­tends to ren­o­vate can pay for them­selves – that is that they will gen­er­ate the fi­nances nec­es­sary to main­tain their struc­ture.

This was the view of pres­i­dent of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion Rudy­lyn Roberts in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

Roberts, an ar­chi­tect, was com­ment­ing on the es­tab­lish­ment of a restora­tion com­mit­tee head­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and in­clud­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is who took the me­dia on a tour of the build­ings on Wednes­day.

The com­mit­tee is tasked with restor­ing his­tor­i­cal sites in the na­tion in or­der to pre­serve the coun­try's her­itage.

"Let them earn their keep. One of the things we have to do is look at the build­ings' main­te­nance.

"Fix it, but put it to a use that will gen­er­ate in­come to main­tain it," Roberts said.

He al­so said that was one of the ways the Gov­ern­ment could di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my with her­itage tourism.

"Her­itage tourists spend more mon­ey than sun and beach tourists. Build­ings like Mille Fleurs can be made to earn their keep," she said.

She said the Gov­ern­ment should al­so look at al­ter­na­tive ways to fund the restora­tion of the build­ings.

"I know we are now un­der con­straints be­cause of fund­ing but maybe we need to get a com­mit­tee to­geth­er that will start look­ing out­side the box to find fund­ing to fix the build­ings.

"The Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) is there and there might be in­ter­na­tion­al av­enues out there that can be tapped but we need to get some­one who un­der­stands how to write pro­pos­als," she added.

Roberts said she was glad that the Prime Min­is­ter had been tak­ing a per­son­al in­ter­est in get­ting the build­ings re­paired.

She added: "We have not had that kind of in­ter­ven­tion in a long time. If he thinks it is im­por­tant it will fil­ter down to the min­istries and then to the rel­e­vant of­fi­cials and we will get some ac­tion. I am cross­ing my fin­gers and my toes."

Roberts said the build­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mille Fleurs and Pres­i­dent's House, were "in a re­al­ly bad way."

"In the case of Mille Fleurs I know some of it will have to be re­con­struct­ed but not all of it. At the end of the day the build­ing needs to still have its his­tor­i­cal in­tegri­ty.

"Right now it is past the point that Pres­i­dent's House was when the roof col­lapsed. Parts of it has al­ready col­lapsed and even with the tem­po­rary roof cov­er­ing it, the ter­mites are at it and it is still de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. It is very vul­ner­a­ble at the mo­ment.

"My heart is with all of these build­ings. It is ab­solute­ly dis­grace­ful that it should be al­lowed to get to that point," she added.

She said even leav­ing Pres­i­dent's House for years with­out at least clean­ing out the left­over rub­bish was dis­grace­ful.