The Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism is aim­ing to have beach chair ven­dors op­er­at­ing on Mara­cas Beach reg­u­larised by the first quar­ter of 2026.

Dr Col­in Neil Go­sine de­clared the time­line when speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Last week, Go­sine, along with Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty days af­ter Alexan­der post­ed a video of a man be­ing beat­en, sup­pos­ed­ly by beach chair ven­dors, at Mara­cas Beach. It was then that plans were an­nounced by Go­sine to reg­u­larise the ven­dors.

Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed con­cern about the way beach chair ven­dors op­er­at­ed.

But speak­ing yes­ter­day, Go­sine said he hoped the new sys­tem would af­ford some re­lief to beach­go­ers and those run­ning small busi­ness­es.

Go­sine em­pha­sised his de­sire to en­cour­age in­di­vid­u­als to en­gage in le­git­i­mate busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, there­by dis­cour­ag­ing a slide in­to crime and oth­er un­to­ward con­duct. The ob­jec­tive, he ex­plained, is to al­low those op­er­at­ing at Mara­cas to reg­is­ter their en­ter­pris­es. Beach­go­ers have com­plained of ha­rass­ment by those rent­ing chairs and tents, and of most of the prime lo­ca­tions on the beach be­ing mo­nop­o­lised by these ven­dors. A bet­ter sys­tem, Go­sine said, would en­sure that “every­body wins in the long run.”

Go­sine said he met with Sturge and Alexan­der to dis­cuss the plans. “The talks fo­cused par­tic­u­lar­ly on chair and tent op­er­a­tors, whose ser­vices have long been a fea­ture of the pop­u­lar north coast des­ti­na­tion but re­main large­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed. Of­fi­cials not­ed that while these ven­dors are vi­tal to the beach ex­pe­ri­ence, there is a press­ing need to in­tro­duce prop­er sys­tems to en­sure or­der, safe­ty, and fair­ness.”

Go­sine added that his min­istry in­tends to col­lab­o­rate close­ly with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, as the ven­dors cur­rent­ly fall un­der Ude­cott (Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go), which is man­aged by that min­istry. “Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion is ex­pect­ed to en­hance vis­i­tor com­fort, pro­vide clar­i­ty for ven­dors, and strength­en en­force­ment mea­sures to pre­vent il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.”