Beach chair rental op­er­a­tors at Mara­cas Bay yes­ter­day de­fend­ed their trade in the wake of a com­ment on so­cial me­dia by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der.

One op­er­a­tor, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Ram­nar­ine, said he was re­leased from the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) with­out any job ex­pe­ri­ence at 19 and has been earn­ing an hon­est liv­ing since.

“Thanks to the chair rental own­ers for em­ploy­ing me when I didn’t have any­thing,” he shared.

He said his first job was to “rack up” the chairs for oth­er op­er­a­tors.

“I didn’t have any­thing, this chair rental here I can proud­ly say this chair rental build me,” he said.

Ten years lat­er, he now has his own chairs and um­brel­las for beach­go­ers to rent. It’s why he was of­fend­ed by Alexan­der’s state­ment that their dai­ly hus­tle was part of a gang en­ter­prise.

In a video just over four min­utes long, Alexan­der spoke of sev­er­al is­sues at Mara­cas Bay dur­ing a vis­it on Sun­day. Point­ing to the chairs and tents on the beach, he claimed they were be­ing used as “stake­outs” for gang­sters.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go tourist dol­lars are fund­ing and fi­nanc­ing gangs and this is the cash flow,” he claimed. But Ram­nar­ine said he was dis­ap­point­ed to hear a min­is­ter make such a state­ment, es­pe­cial­ly about peo­ple mak­ing an hon­est liv­ing.

An­oth­er op­er­a­tor, who lives along the coastal com­mu­ni­ty, said the job keeps many young peo­ple off the streets and away from a life of crime.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, this helps peo­ple stay out of gang ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause if you can come and make $100 or $200 it will help keep you off the block. This con­tributes to keep­ing you out of gang ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.

Two food ven­dors, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, sup­port­ed the op­er­a­tors.

“I doh be­lieve we have gangs on the North Coast...watch­ing the news, you will see prob­a­bly peo­ple drown more than you hear some­body get shot at the North Coast,” one food ven­dor said.

How­ev­er, many peo­ple who spoke to Guardian Me­dia said the beach chair op­er­a­tors should reg­u­larise their busi­ness to avoid any­one ac­cus­ing them of be­ing a threat.

“It could do with bet­ter man­age­ment but I wouldn’t say it’s gang af­fil­i­at­ed or any­thing like that,” one food ven­dor said.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he made the state­ment based on in­for­ma­tion he pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived. He said in 2017, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion led him to a well-known gang leader in the area and he as­sumed the chair and um­brel­la rental was con­nect­ed to that.

“If it is a le­git­i­mate busi­ness, it is still be­ing run bad­ly be­cause the beach users are not hap­py be­ing ac­cost­ed from the mo­ment they get out of their car. They can’t find a space on the beach to use be­cause it’s com­plete­ly cov­ered in beach chairs,” Alexan­der said.

He al­so claimed there was poor main­te­nance of the in­fra­struc­ture at the beach. He said he made the video to high­light the is­sues Gov­ern­ment met when it came in­to of­fice and which it in­tends to fix.