RICH MAN, POOR PAN

IN this November 2000 picture are then-Prime Minister Basdeo Panday and Pan Trinbago President Patrick Arnold at a function for the granting of State land for a steelband head office and performance theatre.

“You come up with the plan for your headquarters,” Panday told Arnold, “and I will find the money to build it.”

The facility, close to Piarco Airport, was to be part of a commercial city and a first port of call for tourists, then-Culture Minister Ganga Singh recalled.

It was a centrepiece of “The Best Plan,” a project for the national instrument mooted by renowned Caribbean thinker Lloyd Best.

Singh is at left in the picture, with Kamla Persad-Bissessar, senior Government Minister who would become Prime Minister a decade later, and Pan Trinbago’s Assistant General Secretary Peter Kanhai.

Almost two and a half decades later, an incomplete structure, overgrown with weeds, is a monument of national shame.

Pan has been huddled into a disused Government building in Port of Spain, the crime-ridden capital city.

Now, the Government is granting the land to Mukesh Ambani, the Indian mogul who is worth US $120 billion through his Reliance Industries conglomerate.

Ambani is an investment hawk and Reliance is a major operator in petrochemicals, telecommunications, media, textiles, retail, and more.

But Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley travelled halfway around the world to discuss converting the home of pan into a cricket stadium.

Rowley did not propose investments to modernise and make the economy more competitive and create jobs.

He ignored the fact that the Brian Lara Cricket Stadium – budgeted to cost $257 million but set back taxpayers by $1.2 billion – is mainly used for Machel Montano concerts.

The Prime Minister’s earlier visit to Ghana did not meet the announced purpose, and he was accommodated at other State functions.

Silver anniversary activities for Ashanti King Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu 11 took place between April 22 and 26, and his 75th birthday was celebrated on May 6.

Rowley’s trip, his third in eight years, began on May 9,

He again returned empty-handed on trade and investments.

Direct travel between both countries, which Rowley touted, was proposed as far back as 1964.

Then-Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams stopped over during an African Safari to meet President Kwame Nkrumah, an anti-colonial fighter whom he admired.

With little to deliver upon his return, Rowley spoke in simplified, broad terms, and was greeted by power-puff media questions.  

There was also no probing on the ever-deteriorating crime nightmare, with the nation overwhelmed by brazen and murderous thugs.

The only concrete development from the entire charade is that the long-proposed land for our cherished steelband has been granted to one of the world’s richest men.

Once again, look wey pan reach.