Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) has giv­en the pro­pri­etors of the Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Aero­space Mu­se­um un­til Mon­day to re­move their items from the premis­es and will dis­pose of what is left on the prop­er­ty af­ter April 4.

In a March 3 let­ter to the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor Lin­da Kelshall, the CDA re­it­er­at­ed that they had no choice af­ter no­tices to va­cate the prop­er­ty along the West­ern Main Road, Care­nage Bay, by Feb­ru­ary 28, had been ig­nored.

On Car­ni­val Mon­day, the CDA took con­trol of the mu­se­um. Kelshall said at the time she and her team were on Ari­api­ta Av­enue sell­ing food items and drinks to raise funds for the his­toric site.

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith, mean­while, is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the Tourism and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters to get in­volved and recog­nise the mu­se­um’s his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.

He al­so urged “cit­i­zens, cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, his­to­ri­ans, and mil­i­tary vet­er­ans to re­ject the CDA’s de­ci­sion and de­mand a re­spect­ful and re­spon­si­ble res­o­lu­tion.”

Grif­fith said to de­mand the re­moval of mu­se­um arte­facts with­in just sev­en days, with the threat of de­struc­tion for any­thing left be­hind, is an in­sult to T&T’s na­tion­al her­itage. He said nowhere in the world would a gov­ern­ment agency force a mu­se­um to va­cate with­in a week and dis­card price­less arte­facts.

“The CDA’s let­ter makes it clear that this is not sim­ply a mat­ter of le­gal for­mal­i­ties, it is a de­lib­er­ate and reck­less move that pri­ori­tis­es com­mer­cial greed over cul­tur­al preser­va­tion,” he said in a re­lease yes­ter­day.

Grif­fith added that the lack of en­gage­ment with ex­perts, his­to­ri­ans, or mil­i­tary of­fi­cials be­fore is­su­ing an ul­ti­ma­tum high­light­ed the CDA’s lack of re­spect and un­der­stand­ing of the mu­se­um’s sig­nif­i­cance. He said the mu­se­um is the most sig­nif­i­cant of its kind in the Amer­i­c­as and con­tains arte­facts that can­not be re­placed.

“If these his­tor­i­cal items are im­prop­er­ly han­dled, they will be lost for­ev­er, eras­ing cru­cial parts of our mil­i­tary and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the mat­ter, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said she is await­ing “some up­dates” re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion.