Richard Lord

Re­cent road protests in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Siparia con­stituen­cy were or­ches­trat­ed to pres­sure the Gov­ern­ment in­to re­in­stat­ing the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE). PNM MP and for­mer Works and Trans­port min­is­ter Colm Im­bert made this claim dur­ing the PNM's bi-week­ly news con­fer­ence at the of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The op­er­a­tions of PURE were sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in the past six months while the Min­istry of Fi­nance au­dit­ed the pro­gramme. Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er had ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the move, say­ing it would have an ad­verse im­pact on the road re­pair pro­gramme across the coun­try.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on Tues­day that PURE would be re­in­stat­ed, but with a new mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem. Im­bert said yes­ter­day the protests were not or­ches­trat­ed by the Op­po­si­tion PNM, as claimed by Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters. Im­bert said: "Per­sons with­in the UNC who were un­hap­py that PURE had been shut down were be­hind some of these protests, in or­der to put the prime min­is­ter un­der pres­sure."

Im­bert said such a de­vel­op­ment was un­usu­al. "You don't re­al­ly see those kinds of things (protests) tak­ing place in a prime min­is­ter's con­stituen­cy, and that is what clued me in," he said. PURE was start­ed in the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment un­der Im­bert. He said he saw no rea­son why it was shut down in the first place. He said the pub­lic was none the wis­er about the con­tents of the au­dit or why it was done.

He said he felt "it was sim­ply games­man­ship with­in the Gov­ern­ment, ele­phants fight­ing ele­phants."