Ch­agua­nas is the largest bor­ough and fastest-grow­ing town in T&T with as­pi­ra­tions of be­com­ing a city. Its small-town charm start­ed to change in the 1980s when it be­gan to grow rapid­ly as it drew peo­ple for its bar­gain shop­ping and mod­er­ate­ly-priced hous­ing. This rapid growth came at a price, lit­er­al­ly, with prop­er­ty val­ues in­creas­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

Re­al es­tate and rent, how­ev­er, are not as ex­pen­sive com­pared to Port-of-Spain and in the north-west of the coun­try.

The epi­cen­tre of Ch­agua­nas' de­vel­op­ment was along the Ch­agua­nas Main Road where nu­mer­ous shop­ping plazas were con­struct­ed.

Ch­agua­nas can boast about six ma­jor malls to­day—Cen­tre City, Mid Cen­tre, Cen­tre Pointe, Price Plaza, Xtra Plaza, and the re­cent­ly opened Heart­land Plaza, on En­deav­our Road.

Among the com­pa­nies who have set up op­er­a­tions in Ch­agua­nas are mem­bers of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies ABEL (Al­stons Build­ing En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed), Al­stons Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (AM­CO), and Guardian Me­dia's print­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

With bur­geon­ing busi­ness­es, 2,500-3,000 es­tab­lished in the bor­ough, the planned ex­pan­sion of hous­ing, com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment and an ex­pand­ing pop­u­la­tion es­ti­mat­ed at 128,000, Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Bood­han speak­ing about the gen­e­sis for the thrust to make Ch­agua­nas a city said "On Ju­ly 3, 2014, the then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley came to a meet­ing of the Ch­aguans Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and in­di­cat­ed that when he be­came prime min­is­ter, one of the first things he would do was to make Ch­agua­nas a city.

"Along with my two pre­de­ces­sors, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and Or­lan­do Nages­sar, they would have sent doc­u­men­ta­tion to the rel­e­vant min­istries. I had sent new in­for­ma­tion to the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein on the mat­ter.

"When Ch­agua­nas be­came a bor­ough in 1990, with the ad­vent of the new Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act 21 of 1990, from then, all may­ors on­ward want­ed Ch­agua­nas to be a city."

He said that has al­ways been the dream of all may­ors, but un­der Ram­bachan, there was more de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place.

Bood­han said in 2003 the foun­da­tion was set to make Ch­agua­nas a city and it start­ed to be more "ag­gres­sive", peo­ple start­ed to be much more aware of the plans.

More ad­vanced than oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties

Bood­han said Ch­agua­nas was much more ad­vanced than oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and that they have brought law en­force­ment and NGOs in­to a net­work to share ideas and work to­geth­er.

Ch­agua­nas, he said, was the first city in this part of the world to be­come a mem­ber of the Strong City Net­work, which was rep­re­sent­ed by 162 coun­tries around the world.

Bood­han said he al­so made a call for greater co­op­er­a­tion of faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tion and they had made fan­tas­tic strides over the years to where they are to­day.

He said the pop­u­la­tion grew from 60,000 plus to 128,000 and at­trib­uted this to grow­ing hous­ing and rental ten­ants.

Bood­han said Ch­agua­nas had a high­ly lit­er­ate and skilled pop­u­la­tion and he was proud of the 34 pri­ma­ry schools which were do­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well. He said every year they were see­ing an in­crease in the com­ple­ment of top 100 SEA pupils and schol­ar­ship win­ners.

Bood­han said small­er busi­ness­es were tar­gets of pet­ty crime and he was "very con­cerned" by the ab­sence of vis­i­tors to the bor­ough.

He said the strength of Ch­agua­nas was eco­nom­ic and wealth cre­ation and when they were not see­ing that, it was a sig­nal that some­thing was not hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and he was wor­ried about that.

Bood­han said what was need­ed was to pump re­sources in­to in­vest­ment and as long as there were el­e­ments of pover­ty in any com­mu­ni­ty, this meant that the Ch­agua­nas com­mu­ni­ty can do so much more.

Mean­while, Vish­nu Char­ran, pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in the area, said a ma­jor prob­lem which busi­ness­men faced was "pol­i­tics and bu­reau­cra­cy".

Char­ran said the se­cret to suc­cess in T&T was to "de­vel­op your peo­ple, for­eign busi­ness­es are de­vel­oped in the coun­try, but not lo­cal busi­ness­es". He said this was a dis­as­ter and he was to­tal­ly against it.

Char­ran al­so called on cit­i­zens to work with the Gov­ern­ment to build T&T.

While crime re­mains a prob­lem in this coun­try, Char­ran said the bor­ough was no longer see­ing the num­ber of mur­ders as be­fore. How­ev­er, there were still pet­ty crimes.

Char­ran con­grat­u­lat­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the po­lice ser­vice for work­ing to re­duce the mur­der rate.

Chal­lenges in the Cen­tral bor­ough:

•De­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture such as roads.

•Chal­lenge keep­ing the bor­ough clean.

•Traf­fic a peren­ni­al prob­lem.

•No prop­er city plan­ning put in place.

•Prob­lems with park­ing. Bood­han an­nounced re­cent­ly that plans were afoot to erect a four-storey car park near to the Ch­agua­nas mar­ket.

•More than a week ago, dur­ing an in­ter­view, Bood­han told the me­dia that should there be heavy show­ers, the bor­ough would face grave chal­lenges. He said in down­town Ch­agua­nas—in the main shop­ping area—drains and all of the main rivers need­ed to be cleaned.

•Bood­han said more projects were need­ed in the bor­ough, and he was op­ti­mistic that the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide the re­sources, in­clud­ing the bud­getary short­falls from the 2018/2019 fis­cal year to re­pair ve­hi­cles, fix roads and drains, and help com­mu­ni­ties.

See Pages A10, A11

BOX

Traf­fic Al­le­vi­a­tion Project on track

With the open­ing of the Soogrim Trace Round­about with its four con­nec­tor artery roads on June 21, Phase one of the Min­istry of Works And Trans­port's Ch­agua­nas Traf­fic Al­le­vi­a­tion Project was com­plet­ed, and mo­torists and com­muters vis­it­ing the bor­ough may fi­nal­ly get some re­lief in the re­duct­ion of grid­lock traf­fic.

Phase two, a round­about and par­al­lel road near the En­deav­our In­ter­change, be­gins in the next fi­nan­cial year.

Phase three will be an in­ter­change at Munroe Road, to be built in fis­cal 2021.

Phase 4 in­volves an over­pass be­ing built at Brent­wood.

Phase 5 will see an­oth­er over­pass con­struct­ed at Soogrim Trace.

In 2009 when he was coun­cil­lor for Mon­trose on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, Bood­han said shop­pers would be tak­ing their monies else­where un­less a plan was im­me­di­ate­ly put in place to fa­cil­i­tate the smooth flow of traf­fic and pro­vide ad­e­quate park­ing for the thou­sands who nor­mal­ly did their Christ­mas shop­ping in the busy bor­ough.