New CDA board must revamp approach

THE APPOINTMENT at last of a new board at the Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) on October 6 should augur a fresh direction for the authority.

Members appointed by the PNM in 2022, some of whom had served two terms, are gone. But though the faces are new, the areas of expertise represented are familiar, with directors holding backgrounds in law, industry, project management, occupational health and safety, education, marketing, communications and, in one case, medicine.

The task that awaits all is as mammoth as the land under the CDA’s purview: 5,000 hectares. Among statutory bodies, the authority has an unusually wide mandate, with a role to play in economic development, heritage preservation, and social cohesion. A recreational hub, it is a public good. But a 2017 estimate suggested Chaguaramas can generate as much as US$390,328 in value per hectare per year in tourism-based activities alone. Yet, over the last decade, stagnation has set in, with very little sign of such potential being met. The new CDA board must unleash development on the north-western peninsula.

Most immediately in their in-tray is the need to review and upgrade infrastructure. To study the state of facilities under the authority’s remit is to witness the neglect and inconsistency that characterises the maintenance of state assets across the board. For instance, even after an outcry over the collapse of facilities at Macueripe Bay at the height of the covid19 pandemic in 2021, the beach’s upkeep has been scattershot. The CDA, which has been around since 1972, charges members of the public a fee to access and use the car park there but does not seem to have become any better at its most fundamental functions.

Lamentably, the last significant upgrade to the overall area was the installation of a 1,300-foot boardwalk completed almost a decade ago: in 2014 under the first Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration. Over the years, the boardwalk, like the coastline, has suffered, too.

Offshore, an unsightly graveyard of boats in June triggered the attention of authorities after environmental lobbyist Gary Aboud raised the alarm about oil pollution. Dozens of wrecked or abandoned vessels have been allowed to pile up; hydrocarbons contaminate fish stock.

Minister of Planning, Economic Affairs and Development Kennedy Swaratsingh has this month charged the new board with returning to the 1974 master plan for the area and similar documents. But those strategies need to be updated and new priorities set. Mr Swaratsingh is correct to suggest that Chaguaramas can play an even greater role in generating foreign exchange and local business with its yachties. The CDA’s much-publicised tussle with the area’s military museum is the kind of thing that should be avoided; it should be working with stakeholders, not battling them.

The minister’s stated hope that cannabis farming, part of the government’s diversification policy, might find a home in Chaguaramas is an interesting update of Patrick Manning’s vision for mega-farming in Tucker Valley. But that, too, requires boosted infrastructure and a revamped CDA capable of executing an ambitious mandate.