General Secretary of the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU) Grantley Culbard said that although the union has been assured that the Hotel Tower is not for sale, workers are still uneasy saying that signs on the ground are indicative of just the opposite.
According to Culbard, the hotel’s manager RL Singh spoke to him and indicated that the hotel is not for sale, but if it did come to that, the union would be made aware of such a decision. This newspaper’s repeated efforts to elicit a comment from Singh proved futile.
Culbard told this newspaper that he asked that Singh put in writing the assurance that the hotel was not up for sale. Some days ago, the CCWU wrote to the hotel’s management requesting an explanation. The union also threatened an ultimatum if no response was forthcoming.
Hotel Tower Ltd went into receivership to the Bank of Nova Scotia on April 12, 1999 and while under receivership paid $3.5 million monthly to the bank.
Hotel Tower had run into difficulties in the 1990s when it invested too heavily with the aim of becoming a five-star hotel. The investment decision was taken when the economy was booming, but the momentum was not maintained and the occupancy level fell in the face of political turmoil.
As a result, the lack of returns did not allow for money to be reinvested because it was diverted to paying crippling debt.
On September 2, 2002 this newspaper reported that the hotel had moved from a loss-making situation to making operational profits, and that it had doubled its available rooms by over 100 per cent, from 30 rooms in 1999 to around 62 rooms at that time. The managers had sought to raise the sum of $250M to lift the hotel out of receivership.
In mid-2003, the Bank of Nova Scotia ceased its receivership hold on Hotel Tower Limited in an equity transaction which saw businessmen RL Singh, Amarnauth Muneshwer and Ashoka Singh of Canada as the new majority shareholders of the company.
