Come 2025, the cap­i­tal city is ex­pect­ed to get a facelift, as the Port-of-Spain Shop­ping Com­plex Lim­it­ed (PSS­CL) promis­es that the new mall, ear­marked to be built at 43 In­de­pen­dence Square, will be up and run­ning.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, right next door, the Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed $3 mil­lion for in­fra­struc­tur­al works and $20,000 for re­me­di­al main­te­nance of the ex­ist­ing mall, for­mer­ly known as New City Mall.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, PSS­CL chair­man Mont­gomery Guy said re­pairs were al­so be done at East Side Plaza on Char­lotte Street.

Guy said, “Re­fur­bish­ment is al­ready tak­ing place at New City Mall. We an­tic­i­pate that in 2025, the new mall at 43 In­de­pen­dence Square will be up and run­ning and works at East Side Plaza and we’re work­ing to en­sure that the fa­cil­i­ty is part of the (Port-of-Spain) Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme... the PSIP ex­pen­di­ture in the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s records for PSIP un­der the Min­istry of Hous­ing, the New City Mall would have been al­lo­cat­ed $3 mil­lion for in­fra­struc­tur­al work there and we have some re­me­di­al main­te­nance with an al­lo­ca­tion of $200k. How­ev­er, plans are on the way to re­fur­bish and do re­mod­el­ling work at the East Side Plaza, so that would re­quire a dif­fer­ent kind of fund­ing to make that mall’s re­fur­bish­ment pos­si­ble.”

But PSS­CL’s fo­cus isn’t on­ly on im­prov­ing the out­ward ap­pear­ance of the malls, but im­prov­ing its ten­ants as well.

Yes­ter­day, a MoU be­tween PSS­CL and the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NED­CO) was signed to pro­vide ten­ants with en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills train­ing.

Guy re­vealed it is cost­ing PSS­CL a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars to train its over 200 ten­ants.

Guy said, “What we in­tend to do with this is to en­hance the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ca­pa­bil­i­ties of our ten­ants at what was for­mer­ly New City Mall and East Side Plaza, so that their skills are en­hanced, their abil­i­ties are en­hanced, and they are bet­ter suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs in con­duct­ing busi­ness.

“The train­ing is spe­cif­ic to en­tre­pre­neur­ial abil­i­ties, man­ag­ing your records, mar­ket­ing, busi­ness man­age­ment, it’s very spe­cif­ic to that.”

While Guy said there had been no re­ports of ex­tor­tion at­tempts on any of the ten­ants, he ad­mit­ted that the malls had in­creased the num­ber of se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel from pri­vate firms and con­tin­ued to work with the po­lice due to the high crime plagu­ing the cap­i­tal.

He said, “Crime is a na­tion­al is­sue. We are not pro­tect­ed from that. How­ev­er, we have tak­en steps to en­sure the safe­ty of cus­tomers at our malls, en­sure the safe­ty of our ten­ants by in­creas­ing the se­cu­ri­ty pri­vate firms that we have on board, as well as work­ing with the TTPS to pro­vide that ex­tra blan­ket of se­cu­ri­ty at both malls,” he said.