Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has announced that a permanent home has been found for the headquarters of Pan Trinbago.
He disclosed during the Orchestra Finals of the National Steelband Music Festival at the Jean Pierre Complex, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday night that the proposed site is the abandoned Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain Post Office.
Rowley said Pan Trinbago had driven a “hard bargain” on the matter but that the arrangement will leave the organisation “in a location worthy of the home of steelband.”
“The Government and Pan Trinbago have agreed to a design for a headquarters building worthy of its location in the city of Port-of-Spain on Wrightson Road on the old post office site. And very soon when you see the architects’ rendering of what that building would look like, I am guaranteeing you that you will be proud because like everything else, it will look somewhere like a pan,” he said.
“And in the city of Port-of-Spain, the only city in the world that will have a building like that, Pan Trinbago and the Government will share that building with Pan Trinbago using its share of the building to support its financial ventures and be in a location worthy of the home where steelband was invented.”
Rowley said, “A government of Trinidad and Tobago, in attempting to promote and assist Pan Trinbago in the management of pan affairs, had given the steelpan movement a plot of land out in the east, just south of Trincity, for a Pan Trinbago headquarters and possibly a business site. Pan Trinbago stepped out haltingly to do that and I dare say it got not only stuck in the mud, but it literally became a national eyesore.”
The previous site that was alloted for Pan Trinbago in Trincity has now been identified as a proposed venue for construction of a cricket academy funded by the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd.