Port of Spain mayor promises Woodford Square restoration in fiscal 2025

Port of Spain mayor Chinua Alleyne says the city council will restore the fountain in Woodford Square, and collaborate with cultural groups in fiscal 2025, in a bid to push Port of Spain’s heritage tourism and economic development potential.

The council has focused extensively on local economic development over the past year, taking a “whole of government approach to the work we’re doing,” Alleyne said, speaking at the PNM’s post-budget discussion at the Belmont Community Centre on October 4.

“It meant collaborating with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Tourism Trinidad and all other stakeholders (to ensure) that all of the services were in place for the start of the cruise ship season last financial year.

“(That work) has already begun apace (this year),” Alleyne said.

Deputy mayor Abena Hartley is leading the efforts, he added.

He credited Hartley for securing a nearly $1 million line item for a tourism development programme for the capital in fiscal 2025.

Alleyne said the council is looking beyond cruise ship passengers, working with TUCO, Pan Trinbago, the Hosay Association, and others to develop their projects to push heritage tourism.

The administration, he added, has made significant efforts to implement fiscal reforms to boost efficiency and succeeded in cutting over-time costs by almost 40 per cent.

“Those funds being directed to delivering goods and services to the people of Port of Spain.

For the upcoming financial year, we’ve been strategising…and we have some very specific areas of focus.

“We have a responsibility to make sure we protect all of our heritage assets.

He said similar restorative work done on the cenotaph in Memorial Park will be done on the nearly 160-year-old fountain in Woodford Square during the fiscal year.

Additionally, he said the council has been allocated a “significant amount” of resources under its development programme for road restoration works.

“I am going to recommend to the council…that we invest an additional $1 million to the pothole-eradication programme in the city of Port of Spain, ensuring that the monies that the monies we’re allocated, the monies we’re able to generate – all of those monies go to the benefit of the people of Port of Spain and the wider public.”