Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

De­vel­op­er of Caribbean Cin­e­mas South­park10 Joseph Ra­hael is hope­ful that the new ul­tra-mod­ern mul­ti­plex cin­e­mas in South Trinidad will be opened be­fore the long In­de­pen­dence week­end.In an in­ter­view, Ra­hael said the cin­e­mas were still closed be­cause they were un­able to get a li­cence from the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates court.Asked to quan­ti­fy loss­es, Ra­hael said: "I pre­fer if you speak with the own­er Robert Car­rady.

"All I can say for now is that we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to get the re­quired li­cence."Con­tact­ed on his cel­lu­lar phone in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic yes­ter­day, Car­rady said it was dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate how much mon­ey was lost since the mul­ti­plex cin­e­mas were shut down by po­lice last Tues­day."This fig­ure has to be prop­er­ly cal­cu­lat­ed. What I can say for now is that the ap­pli­ca­tion for the li­cence has been filed along with all cor­re­spond­ing doc­u­ments.

"Every­thing is in or­der so hope­ful­ly the ap­pli­ca­tion will be grant­ed soon­er than lat­er."Po­lice con­tin­ued to keep watch over the mul­ti­plex fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day. Se­nior Supt Ce­cil San­tana said they could not al­low the fa­cil­i­ty to op­er­ate un­til the nec­es­sary re­quire­ments are met.Ac­cord­ing to the Cin­e­mato­graph Act of 1936, a li­cence has to be ob­tained from the court be­fore any cin­e­ma is opened.

How­ev­er, San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Ra­grel­lo said the Act is out­dat­ed, ir­rel­e­vant and needs to be amend­ed.He ex­plained that the law was an "an­ti�quat­ed one" be­cause movies were now in dig­i­tal for­mat and not film.Since the mul­ti­plex was shut down, the com­pa­ny has been try­ing to get a li­cence but this was ham­pered by on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates' Court.The $20 mil­lion mul­ti­plex at Michael Ra­hael Boule­vard Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do has been at­tract­ing hun­dreds of peo­ple on a dai­ly ba­sis.

Sev­er­al pa­trons said they were ea­ger­ly await­ing its open­ing.

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What is Caribbean Cin­e­mas?

Caribbean Cin­e­mas is a chain of movie the­atres in Puer­to Ri­co and the Caribbean. It is the on­ly ma­jor chain in Puer­to Ri­co, af­ter its main com­peti­tor CineVista The­atres, went bank­rupt and closed all of its cin­e­mas. The chain has ex­pand­ed in­to Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, St Thomas, St Maarten, St Kitts, St Lu­cia, An­tigua, Aru­ba and T&T.