One day af­ter the clo­sure of the Break­fast Shed, cooks who once worked there have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to fight back, with three ven­dors threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). At the same time, politi­cians across the di­vide are urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to step in and pre­serve what they de­scribe as a cul­tur­al land­mark.

The ven­dors, in­clud­ing three cooks from two es­tab­lish­ments, have threat­ened to sue Ude­cott and its CEO, Tam­i­ca Charles, af­ter chair­man Shankar Bidaisee told Guardian Me­dia that the op­er­a­tors were not evict­ed but in­stead faced de­mands for $1.8 mil­lion in out­stand­ing rent.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 29, at­tor­ney Ken­neth Munroe Brown ac­cused the state agency of un­law­ful­ly shut­ting down the fa­cil­i­ty and break­ing promis­es dat­ing back near­ly two decades. He al­so ac­cused Charles of forc­ing ven­dors out of their liveli­hoods.

“Per­mit us to state at the out­set that our Cham­bers con­sid­ers it re­pug­nant in the ex­treme that your Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer – Ms Tam­i­ca Charles would so bla­tant­ly choose to mis­lead both your Board and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, by feed­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion to the Chair­man and the press by deny­ing hav­ing is­sued evic­tion no­tices,” Brown wrote.

He fur­ther al­leged that Charles had “bul­lied, in­tim­i­dat­ed and hound­ed our clients out of their busi­ness op­er­a­tion to the ex­tent that un­der the pres­sure of duress and ha­rass­ment their busi­ness­es have fold­ed.”

The let­ter warned that the clo­sure should not be tak­en as a sur­ren­der and point­ed out that pro­pos­als for an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment were ad­vanced ear­li­er in the month but ig­nored.

Brown re­mind­ed the board that in 2005, ven­dors were dis­placed to make way for wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment. At the time, the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had promised $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion per cook.

“To date, rather sad­ly, on­ly $100,000 was paid across the board, leav­ing a bal­ance of $400,000 per cook still out­stand­ing, so that with the then 15 af­fect­ed cooks, the un­paid bal­ance now stands at $6 mil­lion ex­clu­sive of in­ter­est and costs,” the let­ter said.

The at­tor­ney called on Ude­cott to “do right” by ho­n­our­ing com­mit­ments, recog­nis­ing ven­dors’ rights, and set­tling the out­stand­ing bal­ance with in­ter­est and le­gal fees. He warned that fail­ure to en­gage with­in 14 days would lead to le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

“Take No­tice as well that le­gal pro­ceed­ings will al­so be in­sti­tut­ed against your CEO, per­son­al­ly, for gross neg­li­gence, mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice, and op­pres­sive con­duct,” Brown added.

Ex-min­is­ters beg govt to help

For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Jack Warn­er urged the State to in­ter­vene, warn­ing against shut­ting down what he called a cul­tur­al icon and tourist at­trac­tion. He said re­lo­ca­tion should be con­sid­ered in­stead of clo­sure.

“You don’t close down the Debe dou­bles, for ex­am­ple. That’s a tourist at­trac­tion. You don’t close down the Break­fast Shed. That’s the first thing tourists see when they come in­to the coun­try by boat. And I’m say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment should in­ter­vene and save the Break­fast­Shed, but not in its present lo­ca­tion.”

He added that he was not deeply dis­ap­point­ed by the de­vel­op­ment.

“For me, it was not a sur­prise, but it’s painful. Be­cause I eat there up to last week. They told me that they couldn’t... the rent was too high. They couldn’t pay it af­ter the pan­dem­ic. They said to me, al­so, too, that cus­tomers de­clined. They said, equal­ly, al­so, too, they couldn’t pay Ude­cott $22,000 a month be­cause, ac­cord­ing to that, they had to make $200 per day min­i­mum to be able to pay that.”

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie al­so backed calls to pre­serve the food stalls, call­ing them a land­mark.

“I con­sid­ered their is­sues with rent, as well as is­sues faced by Movi­eTowne and its ten­ants with rent. And I didn’t see Movi­eTowne closed down. I go there reg­u­lar­ly, I didn’t see any shops shut­tered or not open dur­ing the time when they had rent is­sues. So why should this hap­pen with the Break­fast hed? And the land­lord is the same.”

“A com­pas­sion­ate gov­ern­ment would have worked with them, even if they have ar­rears, to try to re-sit­u­ate the Break­fast Shed.”

Cuffie al­so re­called the Shed’s his­toric place in na­tion­al life, not­ing that the late moth­er of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley once worked there. He said what drew him to the lo­ca­tion was not just the food, but the peo­ple — mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry, politi­cians, and every­day cit­i­zens — who gath­ered to de­bate na­tion­al is­sues.

Ude­cott has yet to is­sue a pub­lic state­ment in re­sponse to the claims. At­tempts yes­ter­day to reach act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, the com­pa­ny’s line min­is­ter, as well as CEO Tam­i­ca Charles, were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, Ude­cott’s chair­man would on­ly dis­miss as “fake” a cir­cu­lat­ing pho­to claim­ing to be an of­fi­cial com­pa­ny no­tice invit­ing ven­dors to sell In­di­an del­i­ca­cies such as dou­bles, aloo pies, sa­heena, and oth­er dish­es.