Former PoS mayor challenges PM to put money into city

Louis Lee Sing - JEFF K MAYERS
Louis Lee Sing - JEFF K MAYERS

FORMER Port of Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing is suggesting that the Prime Minister and attorney general Faris Al Rawi should invest some of their money in Port of Spain’s revitalisation so that private investors will come forward.

Lee Sing said both Dr Rowley and attorney general Faris Al Rawi were not men of “little means'' and their investment would kick-start the funding needed for the revitalisation.

On Monday Rowley announced plans for the revitalisation of the city at a conference at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain. Six focus areas were announced: the Memorial Plaza Development, the development of Salvatori site, Piccadilly site development, City Gate development, PowerGen site development and Foreshore Green space.

Lee Sing said he did not say this to be tongue in cheek nor did he say it lightly because “sometimes one has to put their money where their mouth is.”

He added that he does not see Port of Spain being the main shopping hub it once was as urban development has occurred in other areas of the country.

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For the city to be bustling again it must become a residential tourist centre, he said.

He said if apartments were built on spaces like the Salvatori site then, “the nature of the business on Henry Street, Queen Street will change.” However, Lee Sing said this could not be done at the level of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).

He said one would see more restaurants and bars.

For him, the city’s revitalisation was not only about erecting buildings but about pedestrianising it. To pedestrianise a space means to make a street or part of a town into an area that is only for people who are walking, not for vehicles, according to the oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com.

Lee Sing said the state Port of Spain is in, has a lot to do with the People’s National Movement (PNM).

But he believes that Rowley championing this particular development plan will result in a rejuvenation of the city and that was to be welcomed and appreciated.

He added that he was excited largely about the revitalisation because Rowley, like the late, former Prime Minister Patrick Manning, was illustrating “some anxieties about putting the wrongs right” in the context of Port of Spain.

He said Manning went about it by putting up enhancements and setting up the East Port of Spain Development Company Ltd with the intent that, “serious redevelopment work would have taken place in East Port of Spain” but this did not happen.

He said to Rowley’s credit he rehabilitated the Red House, the central library, Queen’s Royal College, Mille Fleurs, Killarney (Stollmeyer's Castle), Whitehall and the Old Ministry of Agriculture and President's House.

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He added that over a long period the issue of the development of plans in Port of Spain in particular “has, in my opinion, been a racket to make money.”

He said when he came to the city as mayor one of the first documents he was asked to sign off on was the payment to a planner who developed a plan for the city that the city was never in a position to look at largely because much of the planning had been taken over by the Urban Development Corporation of TT (Udecott).

Lee Sing said he signed off on it reluctantly and paid the contractor for the plan which was added to the already to the stack of plans that “was perhaps a mile wide.”

Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) also weighed in on the Government’s revitalisation plans saying it applauded the bold initiative.

In a media release it said, “for far too long it has been an eye sore unbecoming of our beautiful country.

“However, this long overdue facelift is being funded by ‘public private partnerships.’”

It called on the Government to operationalise section seven of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act.

“Without the legislative oversight of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act (the Act), these ‘public private partnerships’ will go unmonitored, unregulated and unchecked leaving our resources unprotected from the vagaries of secret deals which lack transparency and accountability.”

It said section seven gives the Office of the Procurement Regulator the power to monitor public private partnerships, “the very means by which our Government intends to fund the city’s revitalisation.”

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