Red House move is unpopular

THE EDITOR: The people’s Parliament is to be shunted to a new home and the Magistracy is to move out of its brand new quarters it has not yet occupied, all because the experts say there isn’t room enough in the Red House lodgings. After hearing, at the Piarco enquiry, so much about the frailties of “experts”, we claim patients’ privilege of a second opinion. What do the Permanent Secretaries say, the TT Institute of Architects, the Association of Professional Engineers, the Joint Committee of Parliament, the Judiciary? I am not implying that the experts who made the recommendation are incompetent or dishonest. The bald fact is that we are not happy with the move: the Red House is rich with our history of Government, a building of distinctive architecture deeply embedded in our consciousness as synonymous with Parliament.

Should the second opinion confirm that space is inadequate our options may include the following: Firstly: adapting building and uses to needs by (i) modifying size of rooms but making partitions harmonious with the original designs yet flexible enough for future modifications. (ii) clearing out from the Red House every group not totally part of Parliament and its essential functions. Should further elimination be necessary, those further away from the centre of its needs may be accommodated in the renovated Old Police Headquarters across the street. At least they should be well protected there; I don’t see a recurrence of 1990. (iii) adding two storeys on the St Vincent Street side, an extension that should maintain the design characteristics of the main building. Secondly: finding an appropriate site potentially usable at reasonable cost. Incidentally, it seems wasteful and unfair to provide generally decent facilities for the Magistracy then taking them away (any cattle boils?) and, worse yet, holding no prior consultation with the Judiciary. Can Government easily answer the charge of being insensitive, autocratic, arrogant?

Our Spanish heritage gives us the charming tradition of plazas or squares in the total picturesque environment of our municipal and government buildings. The proposed site doesn’t fit. But there are other sites that do: the north, east or west of Lord Harris Square and Adam Smith Square. The northern side of Tamarind Square is not to be ignored: it may help to make our leaders more conscious of their main function to provide for all the people, especially the disadvantaged. Appropriately, the original role of Kings in the Old Testament was not to rule but to protect the poor. The final cost of acquiring a new site, providing for displaced government facilities in this prime real estate area and erecting the new building is likely to be astronomical. Is it necessary? Aren’t there higher priorities like a National Parenting and Counselling Programme, reduction in the size of classes at all levels in the school system, rapid increase in computer education in schools, a residential rehabilitation centre for vagrants, quality training at all levels in the Public Services (including lower and upper management), improved facilities and incentives for the arts, improving and maintaining roads in agricultural areas, improving our forest protection and drainage efforts, exterminating poverty by developing skills and facilities for ‘fishing’ rather than by doling out massive quantities of ‘fish’. I must stop here; needs are too numerous for one letter. But the money hasn’t come in yet. If it does, can’t we fit in first the needs of our children and our people, and the rebuilding of a middle class, a most important stabilising factor in a nation?

VAN  STEWART
Diego Martin