THE Georgetown Mayor and City Council (MCC) City Engineer’s Department has not approved any building applications by Camex Restaurant Inc., the franchise holder of Church’s Chicken, Mario’s Pizza and Dairy Queen, and Pollo Tropical, in the past four years, leaving the business to incur millions in losses, in some cases.

Managing-Director Terrence Campbell is questioning if it is a case of targeted victimisation and questions whether it has anything to do with his refusal to go the route of paying bribes to get his work done.

Testifying before the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into City Hall being held at the Critchlow Labour College, Campbell informed the inquiry of the difficulty his business has been getting in having building plans approved for numerous locations for some four years now.
“I think it’s incompetence, dereliction of duty and designed in such a way to force businessmen into corrupt activities with City Hall. The system is set up in such a way as to force you to pay a bribe, otherwise you would suffer major losses as I have. I have been told by other businessmen that the matter could easily be resolved and they could take me to functionaries, who I would not name. But I rather lose the $30 million that I did, than pay a cent in bribe,” Campbell established.

According to Campbell, he is clueless as to what could have prompted the sudden difficulty to process his documents, as he has never had any altercations with anyone at City Hall.
According to Campbell, the problem first started in 2014 when in January of that year, he submitted plan #161 of 2014 for the construction of a restaurant in South Ruimveldt Gardens; and to this date, has never heard received a single word from the City Engineer’s Department.

“There would be an immediate response from City Hall if I start construction though,” Campbell charged.

Subsequent to that application, another application was made in 2015 for an extension at the Camp Street location of the business, where Campbell has plans of putting in a gym and day care facilities for his staff. In 2016, another plan was submitted for works on a residential property in Crown Street; after an application for general repairs was never answered, Campbell took the decision to tear down the building.
In August 2016, he applied again for works pertaining to a property in Lamaha Gardens. The most worrying of cases and most expensive, Campbell shared, was when he leased a building on Croal Street, previously leased by SINO Foods, which had operated a fast food restaurant at the location for two years.

However, within of days of taking over the property from SINO Foods and beginning renovation, Camex was informed that no permission had been given for a restaurant to operate at the location. Campbell is questioning how City Hall never knew this in the two years SINO Foods was there, but realised it the instant Camex Restaurant Inc sought to open a business there.

“We entered into an arrangement with SINO to take over the business and one with the owner to take over the lease. Immediately as we took over the property, the mayor, the town clerk and the city engineer turned up to say the building had no permission to operate as a restaurant. This is despite the fact that for two years, SINO Foods operated as a restaurant within the line of sight of City Hall. They stopped us from doing any renovation on the building. In 2016, we applied to City Hall for permission to renovate and permission to operate as a restaurant,” Campbell explained.

This all played out in September 2016. Camex subsequently received approval from the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) to build, and got permission from the GWI to install fixtures. However, City Hall’s approval has still not materialised.

According to Campbell, the business eventually wrote, in 2017, to the then Deputy Mayor Lionel Jaikarran, who sent a memo to the City Engineer Colvern Venture, enquiring about the state of Campbell’s various building applications.

Still no response was ever given. Reports were made to the Private Sector Commission (PSC); the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI); the Ministry of Communities and the Ministry of Business, but, according to Campbell, the City Engineer’s Department has not budged.

“It’s either that there is a decision by the City Engineer’s Department that no application for me will be processed, or it is probably gross negligence or a combination of both. There’s no response on any of those matters. Chamber of Commerce has tried, the deputy mayor has tried, I have tried; nothing could move the City Engineer’s Department,” Campbell suggested.

After suffering millions in losses paying rent on a property that was not being used, Camex Restaurants had to buy out of the lease.

“We didn’t operate it for a day. We never sold a piece of chicken and lost $30 million. Roughly the rent was $1.2 million per month, and we paid the rent for well over a year. We had to close the lease in December, 2017, because we could not continue rent a place that we were getting no revenue from. On terminating the lease, we also had to repair the building and the operators of SINO Foods have sued us for $4.5 million. It could even be more than 30 million by the time the dust settles,” Campbell explained.