Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

En­hance­ments be­ing made on the north­ern side of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to ac­com­mo­date the Au­gust 31 In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade will be re­moved af­ter the event, says Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Shad­ow MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West Phillip Alexan­der.

Alexan­der spoke yes­ter­day amid con­cerns about grow­ing en­croach­ment on the Sa­van­nah.

On Sun­day, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Alexan­der, con­firmed that the pa­rade will be held at a lo­ca­tion op­po­site Pres­i­dent’s House on the north­ern side of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, in­stead of its usu­al venue at the Grand Stand on the Sa­van­nah’s south­ern side.

Alexan­der at­trib­uted the re­lo­ca­tion to the fact that the North Stand is cur­rent­ly stand­ing in the po­si­tion where mil­i­tary de­tach­ments would have had to stand for the pa­rade.

He said mov­ing the pa­rade to the Sa­van­nah’s north­ern side saved mil­lions of dol­lars that would have had to be spent dis­man­tling and re­mov­ing the North Stand to al­low the pa­rade to be held on that side.

The new lo­ca­tion will bring the pa­rade clos­er to Pres­i­dent’s House.

The Pres­i­dent and Com­man­der of the Armed Forces tra­di­tion­al­ly in­spect troops at the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade.

Yes­ter­day, com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gist Denise Dem­ming, in a let­ter to Guardian Me­dia, urged au­thor­i­ties not to “pave the par­adise” and to save the Sa­van­nah.

Dem­ming cit­ed grow­ing con­cern over en­croach­ment on the Sa­van­nah. She said it is a her­itage site that be­longs “not to any ad­min­is­tra­tion, but to every cit­i­zen of this coun­try, present and fu­ture”.

“The Sa­van­nah has stood since 1817, when 232 acres were pur­chased from the Peschi­er fam­i­ly on the di­rec­tion of Sir Ralph Wood­ford. It has sur­vived as pas­ture, race­course, airstrip, and fi­nal­ly as what Ol­ga Mavro­gorda­to so apt­ly called ‘the lungs of the city.’ It is, by the Guin­ness Book of World Records, the largest round­about in the world — a dis­tinc­tion found nowhere else, and one we are qui­et­ly al­low­ing to erode,” she said.

Dem­ming added, “Struc­tures and car park fa­cil­i­ties, each billed as ‘tem­po­rary,’ have crept on­to its grounds for decades. A Car­ni­val Cen­tre now threat­ens to re­place the Grand Stand en­tire­ly, over con­sid­er­able pub­lic ob­jec­tion. This is not the first time we have watched it hap­pen. As one res­i­dent, Maria Ri­vas-Mc­Don­ald, re­cent­ly ob­served on­line, a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion paved an­oth­er end of this same beau­ti­ful Sa­van­nah — and the re­sult, be­yond the eye­sore, was flood­ing.”

Yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said the work be­ing done on the north­ern side to ac­com­mo­date the In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade is tem­po­rary.

“From what I have been told, all of the en­hance­ments are tem­po­rary for this event and will be re­moved,” Alexan­der said.

On whether the en­hance­ments will be re­in­stalled for the 2027 pa­rade, Alexan­der said, “I can­not say. I as­sume the North Stand not be­ing dis­man­tled was in­struc­tive in this de­ci­sion this year. Whether that will be the case next year, we will have to wait and see.”

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram, un­der whose min­istry the Sa­van­nah falls, did not re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s queries on the is­sue. Nei­ther did De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

Dem­ming said the Sa­van­nah does not need im­prov­ing.

“It needs pro­tect­ing. I call on our plan­ners, our her­itage bod­ies, and the cit­i­zens who walk its perime­ter every evening to say plain­ly: Enough! Let this gen­er­a­tion be the one that held the line, not the one that let the lungs of the city qui­et­ly close.”