Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ven­dors at the Break­fast Shed (Femmes du Chalet) are re­new­ing calls for a meet­ing with of­fi­cials of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT), as their ad­vis­ers urge gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to re­solve the dis­pute.

On Mon­day, fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er to the ven­dors Robert Le Hunte said they re­ceived an evic­tion no­tice from UDe­COTT in­struct­ing them to va­cate the Wa­ter­front prop­er­ty by April 30.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed a cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer at the com­pa­ny to ver­i­fy the claim but re­ceived no re­sponse up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Le Hunte ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over what he de­scribed as UDe­COTT’s lack of en­gage­ment, not­ing that he had made sev­er­al at­tempts to ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions on be­half of the ven­dors.

He said he re­mained hope­ful that the mat­ter could be re­solved through di­a­logue with­out re­sort­ing to le­gal ac­tion.

“I am hop­ing that we do get some bit of di­a­logue and that is where I con­tin­ue to press, but I am not dis­count­ing that the le­gal team will al­so be look­ing at the claims and there are some le­gal op­tions that are avail­able,” he said.

Last year, Le Hunte wrote to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), ar­gu­ing that the Break­fast Shed’s Wa­ter­front fa­cil­i­ty had been in­cor­rect­ly wired un­der a com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty clas­si­fi­ca­tion. He claimed this re­sult­ed in ven­dors be­ing over­charged, with month­ly elec­tric­i­ty bills av­er­ag­ing about $13,000.

He al­so con­tend­ed that ven­dors have ex­pe­ri­enced sev­er­al un­re­solved is­sues at the fa­cil­i­ty, which he said re­quired UDe­COTT’s at­ten­tion.

“Right now a lot of these stalls are closed sim­ply be­cause elec­tric­i­ty doesn’t work. There are prob­lems with each one of these stalls and when con­cerns have been raised to UDe­COTT… si­lence,” he said.

“And when we ask, ‘Can I bring an elec­tri­cian to see about it our­selves,’ they say ‘No, you have no au­thor­i­ty to touch the build­ing.’ So what am I sup­posed to do? How am I sup­posed to sur­vive?”

Le Hunte al­so lament­ed that dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ven­dors con­tin­ued pay­ing full rent and elec­tric­i­ty rates de­spite be­ing un­able to op­er­ate nor­mal­ly or earn an in­come. He said month­ly op­er­at­ing costs were ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000.

Re­fer­ring to doc­u­ments, he said ven­dors have col­lec­tive­ly paid more than $3.5 mil­lion in rent to UDe­COTT and over $8 mil­lion in elec­tric­i­ty bills to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

“These are not peo­ple who have not been pay­ing their bills. These are peo­ple who have been hav­ing some is­sues and who have been pre­vent­ed from gen­er­at­ing the types of in­come that they once had,” he said.

Draw­ing on his back­ground in bank­ing, Le Hunte said dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions typ­i­cal­ly be­gin with en­gage­ment and di­a­logue with stake­hold­ers.

At­tor­ney for the ven­dors Ken­neth Munroe Brown al­so at­tend­ed the me­dia brief­ing and raised con­cerns about a prac­tice in which sec­tions of the space around the Break­fast Shed are re­port­ed­ly cor­doned off with par­ti­tions ahead of the an­nu­al Hy­att Lime event.

He ar­gued that the prac­tice could con­sti­tute a breach of the agree­ment be­tween land­lord and ten­ant.

“You have a le­gal de­part­ment in UDe­COTT. The lawyers must be able to tell you that you can­not give with one hand and take with the next,” Brown said.

“You can’t give the Break­fast Shed all this space here—whether they are ten­ants or li­censees—and then sud­den­ly take back 30 or 50 per cent of it. That is called a breach of the covenant; that is al­so called dero­ga­tion from grant be­cause you are tak­ing it back. So how can you take it back and still ask for rent? That’s not fair.”

Brown al­so re­ferred to in­stances where evic­tion no­tices were post­ed on in­di­vid­ual stalls or with­in the din­ing area, warn­ing that such ac­tions could amount to ha­rass­ment and pos­si­ble crim­i­nal tres­pass.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact UDe­COTT chair­man Shankar Bidais­see by phone but re­ceived no re­sponse up to news time.