San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo has come un­der fire from sev­er­al coun­cil­lors for grant­i­ng busi­ness­man Ken­neth Wal­lace a per­mit to vend on state land in Pleas­antville with­out their ap­proval. This, while oth­er ven­dors have been al­leged­ly chased off the prop­er­ty by Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice in the past.

They are al­so ques­tion­ing the sub­mis­sion of an $89,000 quo­ta­tion by Wal­lace for a beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project with­out a con­cep­tu­al de­sign for the Har­ris Prom­e­nade.

The is­sue of the per­mit was raised by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) al­der­man Rooplal Sama­roo dur­ing a com­mit­tee meet­ing last Tues­day at City Hall, which was at­tend­ed by mem­bers of the UNC and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Rooplal in­formed mem­bers present–PNM al­der­man and deputy may­or Dr Fer­ri Ho­sein, a UNC al­der­man and eight coun­cil­lors (six of whom are PNM) that he re­ceived a let­ter is­sued by the cor­po­ra­tion which stat­ed that mem­bers had grant­ed Wal­lace per­mis­sion to sell on the land in Pleas­antville which he had not been told about. The coun­cil has six PNM coun­cil­lors, three UNC coun­cil­lors, two UNC al­der­men and two PNM al­der­men.

San Fernando Mayor Junia Regrello

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Ju­ly 8, 2022, let­ter, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, showed Re­grel­lo's sig­na­ture and the cor­po­ra­tion’s let­ter­head in­scribed.

"The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SF­FC) has ap­proved the avail­abil­i­ty of the green space for vend­ing of his (Wal­lace) pro­duce, such as fruits and veg­eta­bles. This per­mit will al­low him to func­tion be­tween 6 am-6 pm on a dai­ly ba­sis,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter, ad­dressed "to whom it may con­cern”, fur­ther stat­ed that Wal­lace had used his per­son­al funds and re­sources to im­prove the aes­thet­ics of the area which he cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pies.

Wal­lace’s stall is lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Pleas­antville Ter­race and San Fer­nan­do By­pass, al­so known as the Hol­lows, which be­longs to the State.

UNC alderman Rooplal Samaroo

SAN FERNANDO CITY CORPORATION

He al­so man­ages Wal­lace Land­scap­ing Ser­vices Ltd, lo­cat­ed at Cas­sia Av­enue, Pleas­antville.

To his rec­ol­lec­tion, Coun­cil­lor Sama­roo said “no mem­ber of coun­cil had giv­en ap­proval for Wal­lace to sell there".

"We are not tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it," Sama­roo said, dis­tanc­ing him­self from the con­tents of the let­ter, while some of his col­leagues agreed with his stance.

Re­grel­lo was not in at­ten­dance when Sama­roo raised the is­sue.

Sama­roo al­so in­quired from the cor­po­ra­tion's build­ing in­spec­tor David Mo­hammed if he had any knowl­edge of the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) grant­i­ng the cor­po­ra­tion per­mis­sion for Wal­lace to vend, and Mo­hammed replied in the neg­a­tive.

Con­cerned cit­i­zens: No eq­ui­ty in land use

In March, Wal­lace had to de­mol­ish an il­le­gal struc­ture built on the land af­ter Pleas­antville res­i­dents staged a protest against his op­er­a­tions. He now op­er­ates un­der a tent on the piece of land.

The vend­ing is­sue is not sit­ting well with Tri­cia Hamil­ton of the Con­cerned Cit­i­zens of Pleas­antville group, who re­cent­ly wrote Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and act­ing COSL Bhan­mati Seecha­ran ask­ing them to in­ves­ti­gate Wal­lace’s per­mit.

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Hamil­ton de­nied be­ing a UNC ac­tivist.

“All I have been do­ing is stand­ing up for equal­i­ty and jus­tice.”

 Hamil­ton said the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice had a habit of chas­ing ven­dors off the land and would dis­rupt events host­ed by res­i­dents.

“There is no fair play re­gard­ing this land. Pleas­antville is a PNM strong­hold and a lot of res­i­dents are afraid to talk out what is hap­pen­ing. Any­one who stands up to their tyran­ny is la­belled UNC sup­port­ers.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Mo­hammed, who first ad­mit­ted the mat­ter in­volv­ing the LSA “came up" at the meet­ing.

Mo­hammed then said he need­ed to get per­mis­sion from the CEO to speak.

'Vac­u­ous project'

Ear­li­er in the meet­ing, Re­grel­lo had sought ap­proval from the coun­cil for an $89,740 beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project on the prom­e­nade to be done by Wal­lace’s land­scap­ing firm.

A copy of the June 29, 2022, in­voice itemised what was need­ed for the project.

Sama­roo told Re­grel­lo that mem­bers on­ly saw an $89,000 quo­ta­tion by the con­trac­tor and de­scribed the project as "vac­u­ous" be­cause there was no con­cep­tu­al de­sign at­tached.

Oth­ers felt there were more press­ing mat­ters the cor­po­ra­tion could deal with than spend­ing that kind of mon­ey.

The quo­ta­tion was sent via What­sApp to mem­bers days be­fore, and on­ly one copy was cir­cu­lat­ed in the meet­ing.

A mo­tion was moved and a vote tak­en for their sup­port on the prom­e­nade's beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, re­sult­ing in five mem­bers ab­stain­ing.

UNC al­der­man Col­in Leza­ma and PNM coun­cil­lor for Co­coyea/Tarou­ba Tere­sa Lynch vot­ed "no". In sup­port of the project were deputy may­or Ho­sein and PNM coun­cil­lors Naigam Joseph, Robert Par­ris and Ryaad Ho­sein.

"The de­feat of the mo­tion seemed to have drawn the ire of the may­or, who tore up the in­voice he had in his hands and went in­to a tirade about how we were play­ing pol­i­tics," one coun­cil mem­ber who was present told Guardian Me­dia.

"The mem­bers want­ed the process to be done prop­er­ly. The may­or just came up with a quo­ta­tion and an ar­gu­ment that the prom­e­nade is not look­ing good and ex­pect­ed us to pass it. This project was nev­er dis­cussed with us be­fore."

He said Re­grel­lo then brought up Wal­lace’s let­ter and la­belled Pleas­antville res­i­dent Tri­cia Hamil­ton a UNC ac­tivist.

The mem­ber said Re­grel­lo in­di­cat­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion had ob­tained per­mis­sion from LSA for Wal­lace to ply his trade, and then left the meet­ing.

May­or: Let­ter con­tained a ty­po

Con­front­ed on the mat­ter, Re­grel­lo said the let­ter con­tained “a ty­po by his staff”, which has since been “read­just­ed” to state that “I have no ob­jec­tions with his (Wal­lace's) pres­ence there” based on his con­tri­bu­tions to eco­nom­ic and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Asked if Wal­lace was be­ing favoured, Re­grel­lo said the busi­ness­man in­vest­ed his time and mon­ey in the area.

“There’s a lot of emp­ty spaces all over the city and peo­ple are free to be en­ter­pris­ing and use en­tre­pre­neur­ship in do­ing things.”

Re­grel­lo said the land on which Wal­lace us­es falls un­der the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL) but is man­aged and main­tained by the cor­po­ra­tion.

Re­gard­ing the beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project for the prom­e­nade, the may­or said he asked Wal­lace for a pro­pos­al af­ter see­ing his out­stand­ing work.

Labour was es­ti­mat­ed to cost $29,000 and ma­te­ri­als were put at $60,000.

“I told the coun­cil that I have no ob­jec­tion to this. How­ev­er, we can sup­ply the ma­te­r­i­al and ask him to do labour...but he had to do a pro­pos­al on that for us. I on­ly want­ed to get a cost. I al­so told coun­cil mem­bers they are free to source any­body else who could do the same thing and bring it back to coun­cil.”

Re­grel­lo said the coun­cil stat­ed that they would like to see a sketch of the plan be­fore they came to an agree­ment.

He said no mo­tion was put for­ward.

“The ques­tion was asked, do we agree to beau­ti­fy the prom­e­nade? And they all agree. They want­ed to see what the de­sign would be be­fore we com­mit our­selves.”

Asked if he tore up the in­voice, Re­grel­lo replied, “that is not true".

He said we are in the sil­ly sea­son.

Re­grel­lo al­so de­nied la­belling Hamil­ton a UNC, but stat­ed he knows her to be a po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist for the par­ty.

He said Hamil­ton had been on so­cial me­dia ac­cus­ing him of de­priv­ing Pleas­antville peo­ple of a prop­er­ty that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning gave to them, which could not be sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

Wal­lace: I have no par­ty card

Wal­lace ad­mit­ted in a tele­phone in­ter­view that peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty have been fight­ing him for the prime piece of land.

Af­ter erect­ing a struc­ture cost­ing thou­sands of dol­lars to sell fruits and veg­eta­bles, Wal­lace said, the cor­po­ra­tion or­dered him to de­mol­ish the il­le­gal build­ing not too long ago.

“So, if they feel they did bad (sic) for me… they did well. I con­sid­er it a bless­ing.”

Ini­tial­ly, he said, the land was in a mess, which he cleared over a pe­ri­od of time.

“I moved out trucks of rub­bish from in­side here. So, when I opened up the green space, every­body start­ed to get ideas. This type of fight down will be there. There is al­so a lot of en­vy.”

Wal­lace said he nev­er gave up on the spot, and the cor­po­ra­tion even as­sist­ed by do­nat­ing used um­brel­las and land­fill to spruce up the area.

Asked if he per­son­al­ly knows Re­grel­lo and Pleas­antville coun­cil­lor Robert Par­ris, Wal­lace said that he did not.

Asked why au­tho­ri­sa­tion was giv­en on­ly to him, Wal­lace said, the area is suit­ed for the sale of fruits and veg­eta­bles.

“But this is not give-away land. Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty could come and have birth­days and pic­nic vibes here. I am will­ing to share the land with peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Since ob­tain­ing the per­mit, Wal­lace said, he has been sell­ing un­der a tent.

Wal­lace ad­mit­ted the $89,740 in­voice was the first he had sub­mit­ted to the cor­po­ra­tion.

“When they recog­nised that I am a land­scap­er, and they like my aes­thet­ics of work etcetera… they vowed to have the prom­e­nade done. They told me to send in an es­ti­mate, which I did.”

The land­scap­er said he had planned to sub­mit a de­sign with the quo­ta­tion, but time did not per­mit it.

“It was an er­ror on my part not to give them the de­sign. They asked me two times for the de­sign.”

 Wal­lace said ob­tain­ing a con­tract from the cor­po­ra­tion was the least of his wor­ries, as he gets greater grat­i­fi­ca­tion in build­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, which he funds from his pock­et.

“I am not linked to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. I have no par­ty card. Get­ting a con­tract from the Gov­ern­ment doh fan­cy me.”