NO PLAN TO FIX WHITEHALL, PM’S RESIDENCE

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

One year af­ter the Gov­ern­ment de­clared both White­hall and the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann’s to be in poor con­di­tion to ac­com­mo­date Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the con­duct of her na­tion­al du­ties, plans are now ad­vanc­ing to re­lo­cate key func­tions of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) from White­hall.

The OPM’s al­lo­ca­tion in the 2026/2027 Bud­get in­cludes $500,000 for a new project ti­tled the White­hall Com­pan­ion Build­ing.

Speak­ing on the al­lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said White­hall re­mains ill-suit­ed to the needs of a mod­ern gov­ern­ment and that of­fi­cials are ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for sev­er­al OPM de­part­ments.

Padarath said the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at, which he de­scribed as the “en­gine room” of Gov­ern­ment, is no longer housed at White­hall be­cause of long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.

“White­hall is an old colo­nial home and there­fore it is not re­al­ly con­ducive for of­fice space and of­fice en­vi­ron­ment. And there­fore, there are a num­ber of units in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter that we would have been look­ing for space for. And the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary has rec­om­mend­ed that since the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has moved from where they were on Alexan­dra Street, then we can re­fur­bish one of those build­ings as a com­pan­ion build­ing to White­hall,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia.

His com­ments re­vive con­cerns first raised by the Gov­ern­ment in May 2025, when White­hall was de­clared “un­fit for use” be­cause of flood­ing, mould and its un­suit­abil­i­ty for mod­ern ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tions.

On her first full work­ing day af­ter be­ing sworn in, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar op­er­at­ed from her pri­vate res­i­dence in San Fer­nan­do, af­ter be­ing ad­vised against us­ing White­hall be­cause of the build­ing’s con­di­tion.

At the time, Padarath said sec­tions of White­hall had been af­fect­ed by flood­ing and mould and re­vealed that the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at had al­ready been re­lo­cat­ed from the ground floor. He de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as “not func­tion­al” and ques­tioned how ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions could be when the unit re­spon­si­ble for co­or­di­nat­ing Cab­i­net busi­ness had been forced out.

The claims sparked a pub­lic dis­agree­ment with for­mer pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter Allyson West, who re­ject­ed as­ser­tions that White­hall was un­us­able. West main­tained that while parts of the base­ment had ex­pe­ri­enced drainage and wa­ter in­fil­tra­tion prob­lems re­quir­ing re­pairs, the build­ing re­mained struc­tural­ly sound and op­er­a­tional. She al­so not­ed that White­hall un­der­went a ma­jor restora­tion pro­gramme be­tween 2016 and 2019 and served as the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter un­der both Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young.

The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly com­mis­sioned re­fur­bish­ment works at the fa­cil­i­ty through UDe­COTT.

Yes­ter­day, Padarath said work at White­hall is on­go­ing but fur­ther as­sess­ments have iden­ti­fied the need for ad­di­tion­al up­grades.

“I did share with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty at the last oc­ca­sion of Bud­get 2025/2026 that the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at, which is the en­gine room, the heart and soul of Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions, is no longer housed at White­hall be­cause of the cir­cum­stances of mould and un­suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tions. Some work has start­ed there, and the work is on­go­ing there, I am ad­vised,” he said.

He said a re­cent site vis­it by the Min­istry of Plan­ning found ad­di­tion­al re­me­di­al work was re­quired be­fore the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at could re­turn to White­hall.

Both the prime min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence and the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre are housed in St Ann’s.

On the work to be done at that com­pound, Padarath said Cab­i­net busi­ness is now be­ing con­duct­ed at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre af­ter some work on struc­tur­al is­sues he raised on en­try to of­fice last year.

Padarath had com­plained about op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies at the fa­cil­i­ty, in­clud­ing non-func­tion­ing se­cu­ri­ty scan­ners. This had re­sult­ed in the Gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly hold­ing Cab­i­net meet­ings and post-Cab­i­net brief­in­gs at the Red House be­fore they could re­turn to the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

Yes­ter­day, he said, “We have done some work at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre to make it a bit more func­tion­al and there­fore while there is a need to en­sure that there is prop­er man­age­ment in terms of how we spend lim­it­ed re­sources that we have at this time, a small amount of work has hap­pened at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre to en­sure that it is more suit­able for its op­er­a­tional use. And there­fore, Cab­i­net meet­ings have been tak­ing place at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.”

How­ev­er, Padarath said work at the PM’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence would be too ex­pen­sive.

“No work has been done to the res­i­dence part; that would re­quire a lot of mon­ey that the coun­try does not have at this time.”

Dur­ing a site vis­it short­ly af­ter the change of gov­ern­ment, Padarath de­scribed the res­i­dence as be­ing in an even worse con­di­tion than White­hall, re­sult­ing in Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­main­ing at her pri­vate res­i­dence in Palmiste.

“In my re­spect­ful view, they left it like a dump. The res­i­dence, to me, is in a far worse con­di­tion than White­hall,” he said then.

Padarath crit­i­cised the con­di­tion of the premis­es, say­ing it was “di­sheveled” and claimed there were main­te­nance is­sues through­out the prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing large holes on por­tions of the com­pound; prob­lems with the moat sur­round­ing the res­i­dence, sew­er-re­lat­ed is­sues, con­den­sa­tion prob­lems, rot­ting and swelling wood­work.

In re­sponse, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley post­ed a video on so­cial me­dia high­light­ing the con­di­tion he left the premis­es in.