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One day af­ter the clo­sure of the Break­fast Shed, cooks who once worked there have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to fight back, with three ven­dors threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). At the same time, politi­cians across the di­vide are urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to step in and pre­serve what they de­scribe as a cul­tur­al land­mark.

The ven­dors, in­clud­ing three cooks from two es­tab­lish­ments, have threat­ened to sue Ude­cott and its CEO, Tam­i­ca Charles, af­ter chair­man Shankar Bidaisee told Guardian Me­dia that the op­er­a­tors were not evict­ed but in­stead faced de­mands for $1.8 mil­lion in out­stand­ing rent.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 29, at­tor­ney Ken­neth Munroe Brown ac­cused the state agency of un­law­ful­ly shut­ting down the fa­cil­i­ty and break­ing promis­es dat­ing back near­ly two decades. He al­so ac­cused Charles of forc­ing ven­dors out of their liveli­hoods.