Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ven­dors of Femmes du Chalet, com­mon­ly known as the “Break­fast Shed,” have been in­struct­ed to va­cate the Wa­ter­front prop­er­ty by April 30, ac­cord­ing to their fi­nan­cial ad­vi­sor, Robert Le Hunte.

Le Hunte de­scribed the lat­est de­vel­op­ment as “un­for­tu­nate” and a “high-hand­ed” treat­ment of small busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Le Hunte con­firmed that ven­dors were giv­en an evic­tion let­ter by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­CoTT).

He said fur­ther de­tails on the re­sponse of the ven­dors would be re­vealed at a me­dia brief­ing to­mor­row, but ad­mit­ted that the de­vel­op­ment was dis­ap­point­ing, as he has worked along­side the ven­dors in reach­ing out to UDe­CoTT in seek­ing a meet­ing.

He added that the eatery has been a sta­ple of down­town Port-of-Spain’s cul­ture for decades, and felt there was no ef­fort on the part of the UDe­CoTT to work with the ven­dors in re­solv­ing the is­sue am­i­ca­bly.

Last Oc­to­ber, Le Hunte de­liv­ered a let­ter to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) where he raised con­cerns that the stalls at the eatery were in­cor­rect­ly as­sessed as be­ing com­mer­cial cus­tomers.

As a re­sult of this, he ar­gued that the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) over­charged the ven­dors, not­ing that they were owed mon­ey by the com­mis­sion.

“The last let­ter to the UDe­CoTT was just about a month and a half ago, call­ing for a meet­ing, out­lin­ing the dif­fer­ent is­sues.

“We would like to sit down round the ta­ble and dis­cuss the is­sues and see whether we can come up with some am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion. You are say­ing that I owe you mon­ey, you al­so owe me some mon­ey... so let’s sit down and talk.

“It is re­al­ly sad that we take in­sti­tu­tions like this and sim­ply be­cause the peo­ple here can’t fight for them­selves, or are not able to fight for them­selves, you take ad­van­tage of them in the man­ner of which they are be­ing tak­en ad­van­tage of.”

Le Hunte said the ven­dors were not un­will­ing to pay rent for the space, con­tend­ing that they have paid “sub­stan­tial amounts of mon­ey,” for use of the area.

While at the Femmes du Chalet yes­ter­day, on­ly three eater­ies were seen open.

One work­er, who asked not to be named, said many staff were un­easy about the let­ter as they made their liv­ing as life­long em­ploy­ees at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“There are peo­ple around here whose first and on­ly job was cook­ing and cash­ing. It’s some­thing we are afraid of, if things aren’t sort­ed out, but what can you do?”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed UDe­CoTT’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.