Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce Emer­son Ched­die be­lieves that while bor­ough sta­tus in 2023 did not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly make Siparia a more de­vel­oped dis­trict, it has laid the foun­da­tion for busi­ness­es to grow.

The Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce has over 100 mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing re­tail, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, en­er­gy sup­port ser­vices and many oth­er sec­tors.

Siparia, which has a bustling busi­ness dis­trict, is home to many of the na­tion’s ma­jor com­pa­nies and brands like Massy, First Cit­i­zens, Re­pub­lic Bank, Is­land Fi­nance, Dig­i­cel, Courts, Church’s Texas Chick­en and nu­mer­ous re­tail stores, su­per­mar­kets and oth­er types of busi­ness­es.

There are al­so ma­jor Gov­ern­ment build­ings in Siparia like the Siparia Ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex, a po­lice sta­tion, court house and pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Ched­die told the Busi­ness Guardian that af­ter three years of be­ing a bor­ough, the Siparia busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty must con­tin­ue to build on the new op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered from bor­ough sta­tus.

“Bor­ough sta­tus is not the des­ti­na­tion—it is the foun­da­tion up­on which we must now build a stronger econ­o­my, stronger busi­ness­es, stronger com­mu­ni­ties and greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. That is the vi­sion of the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce, and we re­main com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment, the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and all stake­hold­ers to help re­alise it,” he said.

In June, Siparia cel­e­brat­ed three years of at­tain­ing bor­ough sta­tus.

Durn­ing the bor­ough cel­e­bra­tions, thou­sands of res­i­dents turned out to cel­e­brate the bor­ough’s third an­niver­sary with a colour­ful mil­i­tary pa­rade with calls for uni­ty and de­vel­op­ment.

In June, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Siparia’s first may­or, Dood­nath Mayrhoo spoke about on­go­ing de­vel­op­ment plans, in­clud­ing the re­fur­bish­ment of the Ir­win Park Sport­ing Com­plex. He said work had al­ready be­gun, with un­suit­able soil re­moved and re­placed as part of ef­forts to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Mayrhoo ac­knowl­edged that fi­nan­cial con­straints con­tin­ue to af­fect sev­er­al projects, but he re­mained op­ti­mistic that bet­ter days would come.

Eco­nom­ic chal­lenges

Like many com­mu­ni­ties through­out T&T, Ched­die said Siparia con­tin­ues to face eco­nom­ic chal­lenges with one of the most sig­nif­i­cant be­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin al­most 10 years ago.

“That event fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the eco­nom­ic land­scape of the Bor­ough. Thou­sands of work­ers and their fam­i­lies were af­fect­ed, and many busi­ness­es, con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers ex­pe­ri­enced a sub­stan­tial de­cline in com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty as dis­pos­able in­comes through­out the re­gion con­tract­ed. Two banks even­tu­al­ly left the area. Al­though our busi­ness­es have demon­strat­ed re­mark­able re­silience, many con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of that tran­si­tion.”

He al­so iden­ti­fied prob­lems the busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­ty faces like in­creas­ing op­er­at­ing costs, lack of for­eign ex­change, slow­er con­sumer spend­ing, in­fra­struc­ture de­fi­cien­cies in roads, drainage and park­ing, to­geth­er with con­cerns sur­round­ing crime and pub­lic safe­ty.

He said the Cham­ber be­lieves these chal­lenges should be viewed not as ob­sta­cles, but as op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­ple­ment in­vest­ments that strength­en the Bor­ough’s long-term eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly about the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce’s op­er­a­tions, he not­ed that the busi­ness group is still look­ing for a per­ma­nent phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion out of which they will op­er­ate.

“Pri­or to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce op­er­at­ed from of­fices at the Siparia Plaza Com­plex where we were able to have a fuller in­ter­ac­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty and there­by make a greater con­tri­bu­tion. As a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, we will­ing­ly va­cat­ed those of­fices to fa­cil­i­tate the es­tab­lish­ment of the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit. We did so be­cause we recog­nised that ex­tra­or­di­nary times re­quired or­gan­i­sa­tions to place the na­tion­al in­ter­est above their own.”

He said un­for­tu­nate­ly, since that pe­ri­od, the Cham­ber has not had per­ma­nent of­fice fa­cil­i­ties.

“The ab­sence of a ded­i­cat­ed of­fice has af­fect­ed our abil­i­ty to re­cruit new mem­bers, co­or­di­nate pro­grammes, sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es and con­tin­ue the ex­pan­sion of our con­tri­bu­tion to the Bor­ough.”

More in­vest­ment need­ed

De­spite the chal­lenges that they face as a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, Ched­die said the Cham­ber be­lieves that Siparia’s great­est op­por­tu­ni­ties still lie ahead and they would wel­come con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment in sev­er­al key ar­eas.

“First­ly, con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing roads, drainage, park­ing fa­cil­i­ties, pub­lic spaces and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects. Sec­ond­ly, en­hanced sup­port for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es and ini­tia­tives that en­cour­age pri­vate in­vest­ment through­out the Bor­ough. Third­ly, stronger part­ner­ships aimed at im­prov­ing pub­lic safe­ty and cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment in which busi­ness­es can con­fi­dent­ly in­vest and ex­pand. Per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, we be­lieve greater em­pha­sis should now be placed on in­vest­ing in our peo­ple.”

He said Siparia has al­ways pro­duced out­stand­ing cit­i­zens who have dis­tin­guished them­selves na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“We proud­ly recog­nise Olympic fi­nal­ist Ian Mor­ris, the leg­endary Parang Queen Daisy Voisin, re­spect­ed mar­tial artists like Earl McMil­lan, and many oth­er sons and daugh­ters of Siparia whose achieve­ments have in­spired us. Their suc­cess demon­strates that Siparia has nev­er lacked tal­ent.”

He added that the Cham­ber al­so be­lieves that the time has come to ac­cel­er­ate the eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the south-west penin­su­la fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin.

“We would wel­come com­pre­hen­sive pro­grammes aimed at reskilling and up­skilling dis­placed work­ers, en­abling them to ac­cess op­por­tu­ni­ties in to­day’s evolv­ing econ­o­my. Sim­i­lar­ly, the es­tab­lish­ment of eTeck in­dus­tri­al parks and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment zones with­in the re­gion would at­tract in­vest­ment, di­ver­si­fy eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, gen­er­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and cre­ate re­newed con­fi­dence through­out the Bor­ough.”

Re­silient Siparia

For­mer pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) and Di­rec­tor of Plaza Com­plex Stop N Shop Su­per­mar­ket Ltd, Ra­jiv Diptee in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, gave an ac­count of Siparia’s eco­nom­ic his­to­ry and opined that a re­birth of the en­er­gy sec­tor in south is need­ed to boost busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Siparia it­self has a rich cul­tur­al her­itage deeply root­ed in the ear­ly plan­ta­tion econ­o­my with a di­verse di­as­po­ra of peo­ples and faiths who shaped the town from what it was. For me grow­ing up as a kid in the store/busi­ness, I was al­ways amazed by the sheer tal­ent the town of Siparia pro­duced.

“While the sit­ting Prime Min­is­ter is the icon­ic ex­am­ple, in those days it was the melo­di­ous har­mon­ics of per­sons such as Daisy Voisin who in­spired my fa­ther to paint a mur­al on the park­ing lot wall of the gro­cery store. Siparia was home to many bril­liant bright and tal­ent­ed minds,” said Diptee, who hails from one of Siparia’s old­est and most promi­nent busi­ness fam­i­lies.

He then spoke about the chal­lenges that Siparia faces as a young bor­ough and its de­pen­den­cy on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“I think when you talk about Siparia to­day, the for­tunes are in­ex­tri­ca­bly tied to the de­cline of the oil and gas sec­tor, the Petrotrin clo­sure in par­tic­u­lar, and the de­cline of down­stream ser­vice providers for whom that busi­ness meant every­thing. Com­mu­ni­ties like Pa­lo Seco and be­yond be­came fence­line in my opin­ion and the econ­o­my of Siparia was deeply af­fect­ed by the down­turn.”

On the back­drop of the chal­lenges, Diptee gave the view that a “sense of op­ti­mism” pre­vails in his bor­ough.

“There re­mains a great sense of op­ti­mism that for­tunes can be re­versed if that sec­tor is re­vived but the pangs of those hard­ship are mea­sured and felt by all Sipar­i­ans. Have busi­ness­es been bet­ter off in the last decade? Siparia hasn’t been able to find its feet and rev­enues have mea­sur­ably de­clined over time. All that said, while Sipar­i­ans are re­mark­ably re­silient vi­va­cious peo­ple, they are not im­mune to the ef­fects res­onat­ing from the macro econ­o­my.”

He added that bor­ough sta­tus has brought a tremen­dous source of pride to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“There was al­so the mod­erni­sa­tion of Ir­win Park which has gra­cious­ly host­ed nu­mer­ous com­mu­ni­ty events and bor­ough events. It’s a tit­u­lar land­mark in Siparia sec­ond to La Div­ina Pas­to­ra and the icon­ic Si­pa­ree Mai cel­e­bra­tion which lines the streets with trav­ellers from all over this coun­try bear­ing wit­ness.”