PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER AND AN­DREA PEREZ-SOBERS

The sit­u­a­tion at the Break­fast Shed (Femmes du Chalet) has high­light­ed a ma­jor dis­con­nect be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the re­al­i­ty fac­ing small busi­ness op­er­a­tors in the coun­try.

Head of the Kwame Ture Cen­tre, David Muham­mad, was among those who shared a view of dis­ap­point­ment af­ter all ven­dors at the build­ing ceased op­er­a­tions last week.

“Small busi­ness­es in this coun­try have nev­er been giv­en the kind of pri­or­i­ty that they de­serve, just a whole spir­it of en­tre­pre­neur­ship that we try so hard to en­cour­age. At the same time, we dis­cour­age by not giv­ing them the kind of av­enues or the pos­si­bil­i­ties to flour­ish,” said Muham­mad

At the end of last month, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go re­vealed that over $1.8 mil­lion in rent was out­stand­ing from ten­ants of the Break­fast Shed, which is lo­cat­ed on the com­pound of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

De­spite a claim by chair­man Shankar Bidaisee that no evic­tion no­tice was served to ten­ants, a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter has been is­sued to the chair­man and board of di­rec­tors of Ude­cott, which claimed the fa­cil­i­ty was va­cat­ed by the ten­ants due to con­sis­tent pres­sure from a se­nior mem­ber of the state or­gan­i­sa­tion re­lat­ed to rent owed.

Muham­mad re­flect­ed on the sym­bol­ic im­pact of the clo­sure.

“The clo­sure of the Break­fast Shed is a re­flec­tion of how dis­con­nect­ed we are, as a peo­ple, to very im­por­tant his­tor­i­cal, icon­ic struc­tures and in­sti­tu­tions and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, etc. Of course, the Break­fast Shed’s his­to­ry goes back to ser­vice to men who fought in the war with Au­drey Jef­fers, who we named a high­way af­ter. And so de­com­mis­sion­ing any type of in­sti­tu­tion that con­tains his­tor­i­cal val­ue is a back­ward step for a so­ci­ety.”

Muham­mad said the coun­try needs to find ways to res­cue and pre­serve ini­tia­tives such as the Break­fast Shed. This would al­low these ini­tia­tives to con­tin­ue to pro­vide a ser­vice for mem­bers of the pub­lic, “but they can al­so tell a sto­ry with­in them­selves by their mere ex­is­tence.”

A down­town busi­ness op­er­a­tor said it re­flect­ed a sit­u­a­tion where the land­lord did not at­tempt to un­der­stand the re­al­i­ty faced by its ten­ants.

The store own­er said, “In the cur­rent cli­mate, there is a dis­con­nect be­tween the Gov­ern­ment’s un­der­stand­ing of the chal­lenges faced by busi­ness­es and the re­al­i­ty that busi­ness­es face.”

The op­er­a­tor said, “If Gov­ern­ment doesn’t re­al­ly un­der­stand what your chal­lenges are, how are they go­ing to help you solve those chal­lenges? And that boils down when you have a busi­ness like my­self, to ul­ti­mate­ly feel­ing like you’re in this by your­self, not in part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment. That is the ide­al when the gov­ern­ment is build­ing poli­cies to help sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of small busi­ness.”

He con­tin­ued, “When you think of a place like Break­fast Shed shut­ting down busi­ness, some­thing that’s Gov­ern­ment-backed. And so they ex­pect, the hope is that there’s a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to those re­al­i­ties. So you don’t just say you’re charg­ing rent, I can’t af­ford now. I could un­der­stand if my pri­vate land­lord is tak­ing that po­si­tion. But you know that a Gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty tak­ing that po­si­tion starts to be quite con­cern­ing.”

One ven­dor at an­oth­er Ude­cott op­er­at­ed lo­ca­tion, the Parkade, said it was strange that ar­rears were al­lowed to build to such a lev­el.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er Port-of-Spain cater­er not­ed that the le­gal ar­gu­ment raised by the ven­dors that mon­ey was owed to them, un­der­lined a chal­lenge not of­ten ac­knowl­edged by land­lords.

The cater­er al­so felt that some down­played the role the ven­dors played in main­tain­ing the icon­ic sta­tus as­so­ci­at­ed with the Break­fast Shed.

“We are look­ing at the val­ue of his­tor­i­cal sites like the Break­fast Shed. Some think the Gov­ern­ment did them a favour by them be­ing there. That’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case. They be­ing there is al­so pro­vid­ing that ecosys­tem and that morn­ing cul­ture and lunch cul­ture close to the wa­ter­front, bring­ing val­ue to the space as well.” How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that this did not jus­ti­fy the ven­dors not pay­ing rent.

“Those are two dif­fer­ent con­tracts. Yes, they owe you in prin­ci­ple, but you still have a rent to pay, they can’t not pay rent.”