Arnim Smith, who as a young man survived by selling food and dirty linen disposed of at the dump, is greeted by desperate job seekers as he enters the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) office at Abattoir Road, off the Beetham Highway.
He passes two women sitting on benches doing crochet. One of them, a Muslim in traditional black scarf, complains to the man next to her that she's waiting to collect her cheque.
Men hail him out as "Chief" and "Mr. Arnim" as armed MTS guards wearing bulletproof vests keep a wary watch.
A man in long white pants and white kurta hovers while another whispers to Smith about a project that's been closed.
The chief promises to deal with it before passing the police officer to enter his off-white, air-conditioned office with an off-white desk and boardroom table covered with piles of papers.
Smith, 51, assumed his new job, programme manager of URP, on October 8. A week ago the Ministry of Works announced his new role. The Ministry praised Smith for his "administrative capability" and for his "wealth of experience from both the public and private sector".
"I'm from the business community," says the former Pan Trinbago president of 12 years. He's also the director of operations at Fine Choice Meats at San Rafael.
He takes credit for revamping the steelband body that had "no staff, no subvention, and an office that met from January to March for Panorama" to one whose membership was respected by the elected executive.
He says he plans to deal with problems of ghost workers on the URP payroll, theft of materials and other corrupt practices but prefers not to disclose what these are until he's discussed them with "the people".
"I have ideas to bring about changes in URP, to bring about confidence in the programme," he says. "I don't want to make it public before I discuss it with the people."
Is this job part of the grooming process to perhaps run for office at the next election?
Smith laughs. He pauses. His response is non-committal.
"In life you don't know where you'll reach, what you'll do. I don't know what will happen down the road."
Smith is the last of three children born to Irene Smith, a seamstress, and Rupert Morgan, a bakery owner, at 3 Clifton Street, East Dry River, Port of Spain.
He used to tote wood from the sites of condemned houses in the area or from the roadside to use as fuel for the brick oven. He'd carry flour from the delivery truck to the bakery. He'd have to "scrape the muck out" of the bakery.
Back then, hops bread sold at three cents each.
Life on Clifton Street was rough. It grew worse after his father, a diabetic, died. Smith says he had to find ways to provide himself with clothing and cinema money. He played whappie at street corners and won between $3. And $4, enough to go the cinemas - Royal at the corner of Charlotte and Abercromby, Odeon at Besson Street and Pyramid on Charlotte - for the week. Admission into pit was 12 cents and 27 cents for house.
"These things always result in conflicts and fights," Smith says. "Part of growing up like that has always stayed with me."
To survive, he hustled in the Port of Spain Abattoir, scraping the hairs off hogs at 25 cents a time; picking up discarded linen from the dump, washing them in ponds and selling them to a cotton factory at St. Joseph Road.
Smith used to sell the newly washed clothing to Hugh Moze, a "white man" who made cotton at a shop near the Port of Spain fly-over. The tables turned when Moze, whose business folded, ended up working for Smith as sales manager at Fine Choice Meats.
"We used to get a penny a pound for coloured linen and three cents for white," Smith recalls. "We used to pick up copper and brass and sell. Brass sold for penny a pound and copper five cents.
He ate from the dump coconut jelly, sweets and biscuits Americans based in Chaguaramas threw out.
"Food the Yankees considered spoilt - ham and bologna - the parlour in the area used to buy from us and sell it to the people. I didn't know gastro-enteritis then and no one got it".
The fight to survive, Smith says, helped him to understand the "difficulty of segregation" in this society. The people of the Beetham Estate feel they have been pushed into a corner and see "certain people" as their enemies, he says.
Part of their response is to turn to crime and no amount of policing will help, says Smith, who has admitted to being arrested for steelband and gang warfare. Some of the people he grew up with have either migrated, been shot dead or are still living on the block.
"Your address always works against you," says Smith, whose home is now at NUGFW Circular, Valsayn South. He's referring to people who beg for his help in getting a job, a loan, buying a refrigerator on hire purchase, or admission into private clinics.
"I pick up the phone or give them a letter. In most cases the response is positive. I do it for people who won't embarrass me."
One Laventillean describes Smith as "a strong community person who has never abandoned his roots".
It would be foolhardy for Arnim Smith's friends, foes or acquaintances to try and make him look bad - and get away with it.
Smith says he doesn't have a security guard and doesn't walk with protection, but as a former amateur boxer, now a formidable frame at 240 pounds, one wonders why he would need to.
He won six of the nine amateur bouts his late trainer Wilfred "Bear" Bartholomew got him in shape for at Carib Toyko's panyard-based gym at John John. And he boasts that no one ever knocked him down, even though he was only 135 back then.
"I had always liked boxing. I was looking for different opportunities in life and boxing was a way to open doors for you."
Boxing didn't open any special doors for Smith. But it may help the people who he either grew up with or worked with in the steelband movement to have Smith in charge of "the people's work".