National Trust seeks access to Whitehall amid heritage concerns

Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Se­nior Re­porter

shar­lene.ram­per­[email protected]

In yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian, his­to­ry en­thu­si­ast Pa­tri­cia Bisses­sar called for White­hall and the oth­er build­ings com­pris­ing the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain to be pre­served and re­pur­posed as her­itage at­trac­tions.

She ar­gued that us­ing White­hall as the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter had placed a strain on the age­ing struc­ture, con­tribut­ing to prob­lems with mois­ture and mould. Bisses­sar pro­posed trans­form­ing it in­to a na­tion­al mu­se­um, open­ing it to vis­i­tors for tours and cul­tur­al events, and es­tab­lish­ing a main­te­nance fund to help pre­serve the coun­try’s his­toric build­ings.

As we con­tin­ue on, we hear from the Na­tion­al Trust, which is in charge of pre­serv­ing this coun­try’s his­tor­i­cal sites.

Un­der the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act (Chap. 40:52), the Na­tion­al Trust holds le­gal over­sight for the preser­va­tion of list­ed his­tor­i­cal sites. Sec­tion 4 of the act tasks the body with “iden­ti­fy­ing, doc­u­ment­ing, and pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty of nat­ur­al beau­ty and prop­er­ty of na­tion­al, his­toric, ar­chi­tec­tur­al or artis­tic in­ter­est,” while en­sur­ing “the preser­va­tion of build­ings and lands of na­tion­al, his­toric, ar­chi­tec­tur­al or artis­tic in­ter­est ... and their sur­round­ings.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at their Mille Fleurs, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters on Oc­to­ber 28, coun­cil mem­ber Mark Fran­co and se­nior Her­itage Preser­va­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer Nesyamn Ranut spoke about the trust’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the act.

Those in­clude as­sess­ing pos­si­ble her­itage prop­er­ties, in­clud­ing build­ings, cre­at­ing dossiers on those build­ings and con­duct­ing year­ly mon­i­tor­ing vis­its once sites are list­ed.

Cur­rent­ly, there are over 400 prop­er­ties of in­ter­est and 59 list­ed prop­er­ties of in­ter­est across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“So once prop­er­ties are list­ed, un­der the act, we are re­quired to do year­ly mon­i­tor­ing of them. And, of course, we can on­ly do that with per­mis­sion from the prop­er­ty own­ers so we can gain ac­cess,” Fran­co said.

“We don’t have the au­thor­i­ty to just walk in and show up and walk in and say, we are here to walk around and in­side your prop­er­ty or to look at it and make as­sess­ments.”

Fran­co said the trust ac­tive­ly re­quests per­mis­sion from prop­er­ty own­ers — whether the prop­er­ty is state-owned or pri­vate­ly owned—for mon­i­tor­ing vis­its.

Both de­clined to go in­to de­tails about any sin­gu­lar prop­er­ty.

“When we do mon­i­tor­ings and so on, we try to talk to them (own­ers) and it’s a rel­a­tive­ly pri­vate af­fair un­less they want to, for ex­am­ple, bring to at­ten­tion to the mem­bers of the pub­lic cer­tain is­sues that they may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and it is their right to do so, but it’s not our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty or we would not want to over­step our bounds in that re­spect,” Ranut said.

Asked about the trust’s last vis­it to White­hall, Ranut said it was some­time in 2022, post-COVID-19.

She de­clined to share any de­tails not­ed by the trust dur­ing that vis­it.

But both she and Fran­co said the trust has made nu­mer­ous re­quests to the Gov­ern­ment to vis­it White­hall since then.

The ac­cess chal­lenges faced by the Na­tion­al Trust al­so high­light an in­sti­tu­tion­al dy­nam­ic: the statu­to­ry her­itage body falls di­rect­ly un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tive port­fo­lio of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. Con­se­quent­ly, the trust’s an­nu­al re­quests to in­spect White­hall re­quire per­mis­sion from its own line min­istry, which oc­cu­pies and man­ages the high-se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ty.

Ranut said the re­quests are done year­ly and some­times with more fre­quen­cy.

“We have been mak­ing re­quests reg­u­lar­ly but we do un­der­stand that it’s an of­fi­cial build­ing and ac­cess prob­a­bly would not be as easy as, let’s say, a res­i­dence...for se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er rea­sons, so we do un­der­stand that,” Ranut said.

Fran­co ex­plained that the trust’s work de­pends on re­la­tion­ships built with prop­er­ty own­ers to en­sure con­tin­ued com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to pro­tect her­itage as­sets.

“We want them to be will­ing to con­tin­ue to main­tain the build­ings as his­toric prop­er­ties. If they have been list­ed, we con­sid­er they are very pre­cious as­sets to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“And our role re­al­ly is to try and en­sure that they re­main as these im­por­tant as­sets and that they re­main in a good con­di­tion and that is done through a lot of re­la­tion­ship build­ing that we that we have to do,” Fran­co said.

Asked whether the trust was con­cerned about the state of White­hall, as shared by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, Ranut said, “We are con­cerned with all prop­er­ties that are con­sid­ered her­itage as­sets.

“This is our job, this is our life, pro­tec­tion of all her­itage as­sets so any­thing that hap­pens that could po­ten­tial­ly be an is­sue, we are con­cerned.”

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who is al­so a Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, has re­peat­ed­ly said that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) at White­hall is un­suit­able for mod­ern gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and, in its cur­rent state, is un­fit for use by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Among his main crit­i­cisms are:

• ↓Parts of White­hall were af­fect­ed by flood­ing and mould, cre­at­ing health and op­er­a­tional con­cerns.

• ↓He has de­scribed the 120-year-old build­ing as“not func­tion­al” and not con­ducive to the ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice.

• ↓He has re­vealed that the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at, which he called the Gov­ern­ment’s “en­gine room,” had al­ready been re­lo­cat­ed af­ter flood­ing af­fect­ed the base­ment area where it had been housed.

• ↓He has ar­gued that White­hall is“an old colo­nial home” and is not re­al­ly con­ducive to a mod­ern of­fice en­vi­ron­ment, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to ac­com­mo­date sev­er­al OPM units.

• ↓He has said the build­ing re­mains ill-suit­ed to the needs of a mod­ern gov­ern­ment, prompt­ing of­fi­cials to ex­plore al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for OPM de­part­ments.

Be­cause of these con­cerns, Padarath says Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ad­vised against us­ing White­hall when she as­sumed of­fice in 2025 and ini­tial­ly be­gan work­ing from her pri­vate res­i­dence in San Fer­nan­do.

More re­cent­ly, he has in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing a “com­pan­ion build­ing” for White­hall which will be used to house staff. He said Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the re­fur­bish­ment of a for­mer Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion build­ing in St Clair to house OPM op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, Padarath’s as­sess­ment was dis­put­ed by for­mer pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter Allyson West, who has main­tained that while White­hall had ex­pe­ri­enced drainage and wa­ter in­fil­tra­tion prob­lems, the build­ing re­mained struc­tural­ly sound and op­er­a­tional when the last ad­min­is­tra­tion left of­fice.