DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The fu­ture of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most icon­ic hos­pi­tal­i­ty land­marks has be­come the lat­est flash­point in a bit­ter war of words be­tween the Op­po­si­tion and the sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tion.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is sound­ing the alarm over the po­ten­tial ex­it by the Hilton Ho­tel chain, ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive paral­y­sis and "ram­pant nepo­tism."

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Op­po­si­tion's me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Im­bert said the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment had al­ready cleared the path for a long-term re­new­al with the glob­al brand. Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the cur­rent cri­sis is a di­rect re­sult of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion "drop­ping the ball" on crit­i­cal re­fur­bish­ments and lease ne­go­ti­a­tions.

At the heart of the dis­pute is a lease agree­ment that was ex­tend­ed in 2006, with a com­mence­ment year of 2003 for 20 years to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023. A sub­se­quent one-year ex­ten­sion was meant to a short-term vari­a­tion.

Im­bert clar­i­fied that a 2023 ex­ten­sion—meant to last un­til Sep­tem­ber 2025—was in­tend­ed on­ly as a "hold­ing pe­ri­od" while the state ful­filled its oblig­a­tions to ren­o­vate the 60-year-old hill­top prop­er­ty.

Un­der the terms of the 2006 lease, which Im­bert pro­duced, the state-owned Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTeck) re­ceives 76 per cent of the ho­tel’s ad­just­ed gross op­er­at­ing prof­it.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, records show this arrange­ment chan­nelled an av­er­age of $20 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in­to state cof­fers be­tween 2009 and 2019.

How­ev­er, Im­bert in­sists the gov­ern­ment has failed to up­hold its end of the bar­gain: a $400 mil­lion ren­o­va­tion suite cov­er­ing struc­tur­al, elec­tri­cal, and plumb­ing re­pairs as well as a mod­el room to be de­signed by an ar­chi­tect of Hilton's choice. That mod­el was ex­pect­ed to be repli­cat­ed across the ho­tel.

“The bot­tom line is the new gov­ern­ment came in, they met a work in progress, they met every­thing agreed to, they met a sched­ule of works, they knew what the cost would be, they knew what need­ed to be done, and they sim­ply did not do it.”

Al­le­ga­tions of a "pow­er play"

Im­bert al­so ques­tioned the sud­den re­as­sign­ment of eTeck. The state en­ter­prise was re­cent­ly moved from the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism, led by Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, to the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, head­ed by Sad­dam Ho­sein.

Im­bert char­ac­terised the move as the fall­out of an in­ter­nal "pow­er play," not­ing that the eTeck board is chaired by Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark, the wife of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark.

“And I was quite dis­ap­point­ed to see that there was such a dis­pute be­tween the Min­is­ter of Trade, al­leged­ly, and the Chair­man of eTeck, al­leged­ly. It seems that you know, what they say when ele­phants dance? Or cock­roach have no place in fowl par­ty? So it looks like Mr Ma­haraj was on the los­ing end of that be­cause eTeck has now been moved.”

For Im­bert, the re­struc­tur­ing of eTeck is symp­to­matic of a broad­er trend with­in the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion. He al­leges that state board ap­point­ments are be­ing dic­tat­ed by fam­i­ly ties rather than mer­it.

“If you look at all the state en­ter­pris­es that the UNC has ap­point­ed boards to, is every­body fa­ther, moth­er, broth­er, aunt, cousin, ne­nen, daugh­ter, sis­ter. Un­prece­dent­ed when you look at the peo­ple who are go­ing on­to state boards un­der this UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion. Nepo­tism is ram­pant.”

“If I have to read be­tween the lines, the chair­man of eTeck has more in­flu­ence in the gov­ern­ment than the min­is­ter of trade be­cause of her con­nec­tion to a long­stand­ing se­nior mem­ber of the UNC and that is where nepo­tism goes bad.”

While the gov­ern­ment has yet to pro­vide a full ac­count­ing for the de­lay in ap­prov­ing the ho­tel's "mod­el room" re­fur­bish­ments—orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed for mid-2025—Im­bert warned that the stakes ex­tend far be­yond the prop­er­ty's walls.

“All gov­ern­ments, ex­cept per­haps this one, has formed the view that the Hilton is im­por­tant. Its val­ue goes far be­yond mon­ey spent and mon­ey earned on the Hilton. It cre­ates em­ploy­ment, it’s a flag­ship brand, it’s a tourism fa­cil­i­ty, it con­tributes in no small way to the mar­ket­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

At­tempts to ob­tain a re­sponse from the gov­ern­ment have been un­suc­cess­ful.