NADALEEN SINGH

A Chi­nese con­trac­tor has been award­ed the con­tract to up­grade the Mara­cas Beach. Tourism Min­is­ter Joseph Ross, who made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, said Be­jing Li­u­jian was award­ed the con­tract at a cost of $233,191,981.

He said the up­grade is to be com­plet­ed with­in 24 months. He said the com­pa­ny was cho­sen out of an in­ter­na­tion­al ten­der and it was one of the largest con­struc­tion en­ter­pris­es in the world. "Their ex­pe­ri­ence, their his­to­ry, their fi­nan­cial struc­ture was the best," he said. He said with the up­grade, there would not be any de­mo­li­tion of any ex­ist­ing build­ings or struc­tures.

"We are look­ing ba­si­cal­ly at the beach front, we are look­ing at the car park area, we are look­ing at go­ing a lit­tle fur­ther south of the car park...I am not see­ing in front of me any prop­er­ty to be de­mol­ished," Ross said. He said there were many ben­e­fits to be at­tained from the up­grad­ing of the beach, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment for res­i­dents in the north coast com­mu­ni­ties. "There would be a qual­i­ty beach ex­pe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors and na­tion­als re­sult­ing in im­prove­ments of the over­all tourism prod­uct and en­hanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as a pre­mier Caribbean tourism des­ti­na­tion of choice," he said.