Rhon­dor Dowlat

Busi­ness­man Derek Chin said he be­lieves that Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters in­clud­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, were mis­in­formed re­gard­ing his $1 bil­lion Streets of the World project.

Re­cent­ly, Chin said he was tak­en aback when he heard se­nior min­is­ters in this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion re­fer­ring to his project as a "Gov­ern­ment project" where he was al­leged­ly giv­en a bil­lion dol­lars by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, to have the project up and go­ing.

How­ev­er, Chin re­fut­ed these state­ments say­ing the project was his and all he was ne­go­ti­at­ing with, with of­fi­cials from the last Gov­ern­ment, was a lease that made "eco­nom­ic sense."

"It is my project, to be de­vel­oped by Chin's com­pa­ny, Dachin En­ter­pris­es. My idea. When I sub­mit­ted the Streets of the World project every­one loved it. The last gov­ern­ment saw the val­ue of it from all as­pects," Chin said.

He al­so dis­closed to the T&T Guardian that his project, once on stream, would be pri­vate­ly fund­ed. An in­vest­ment of $500 mil­lion, "just to start. So, no tax pay­ers or Gov­ern­ment mon­ey will be in­volved."

Both Price Wa­ter­house and Ernst and Young were the prin­ci­ple ne­go­tia­tors.

Chin ex­plained that the Streets of the World project was all about tak­ing T&T's cul­ture–Car­ni­val, steel pan, band­lead­ers, mu­sic and plac­ing it in a world class show case.

The Streets of the World project has been crit­i­cised by for­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Afra Ray­mond who claims it is in breach of Cen­tral Ten­ders Board reg­u­la­tions. He said the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) process used in Au­gust 2011 by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment was im­prop­er and void­able since the as­sess­ment rules were pub­lished one month af­ter the clos­ing date.

The on­ly ob­sta­cle in the way for Chin is the sign­ing of the pa­pers to ac­quire ten acres of land al­lot­ted to Dachin En­ter­pris­es so that con­struc­tion can be­gin. Chin was charged $130 mil­lion for ten acres.

MORE IN­FO

The Streets of the World project will con­sist of 22 acres of ul­ti­mate des­ti­na­tion, ap­peal­ing to the en­tire Caribbean.

The project is ex­pect­ed to boost Trinidad's tourism, by ex­ten­sion the econ­o­my and al­so, cre­ate em­ploy­ment for thou­sands of peo­ple.

Of­fi­cials of Dis­ney and Het­tema Group, who spe­cialise in unique­ly cre­ative de­signs for theme parks, mu­se­ums and cul­tur­al at­trac­tions, have al­ready vis­it­ed T&T and held ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with Chin on the project.

One of the main at­trac­tions will be the Main Street, a re-cre­ation of Fred­er­ick Street, down­town Port-of-Spain, in the 1930s com­plete with a tram car. Chin ex­plained that the streets will re­flect the rich cul­ture of Trinidad and there will be a Madame Tus­saud's Wax Mu­se­um high­light­ing T&T's Car­ni­val and its his­to­ry, the his­to­ry of the steel­pan and ca­lyp­so.

There are al­so plans for a live en­ter­tain­ment the­atre on the site.

Al­so, dif­fer­ent streets high­light­ing the dif­fer­ent cul­tures of all the peo­ple that came to T&T and set­tled in­clud­ing the In­di­ans, Chi­nese, Africans, Eu­ro­peans and Syr­i­ans.

The de­vel­op­ment would al­so in­cor­po­rate an aquar­i­um fea­tur­ing the leatherback tur­tles, fish­es of the Caribbean and a coral reef.

There will al­so be a Fer­ris wheel and a Movi­eTowne Eye, which is sim­i­lar to the Or­lan­do Eye.