Richard Lord

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says re-rout­ing Debe to Mon­de­sir Road, Fyz­abad, stretch of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, is not an op­tion. And leader of the protest­ing High­way Re-route Move­ment Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh is warn­ing of "dra­mat­ic" protest as a con­se­quence.

Warn­er and Kublals­ingh spoke with re­porters sep­a­rate­ly af­ter a three-hour meet­ing, which in­clud­ed pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) Dr Car­son Charles, at Warn­er's of­fice on Lon­don Street, Port-of-Spain. It was part of the con­sul­ta­tion process to­wards find­ing a res­o­lu­tion to the dis­pute be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the pro­test­ers over the Debe to Mon­de­sir leg of the high­way.

Kublals­ingh and oth­er mem­bers of his team made pre­sen­ta­tions high­light­ing the ad­verse im­pact they say the project will have the res­i­dents in the ar­eas. Of­fi­cials from Nid­co de­fend­ed the project, say­ing all the con­cerns raised were be­ing ad­dressed and the project was to be con­struct­ed in the in­ter­est of the en­tire na­tion.

Warn­er said he will make a pre­sen­ta­tion to Cab­i­net on Thurs­day based on yes­ter­day's meet­ing. He said he could not pre-empt the Cab­i­net de­ci­sion. Asked if a re-route of the high­way at that lo­ca­tion was fea­si­ble, Warn­er said: "From the ev­i­dence we have be­fore us, it does not seem that way."

He said it was more like­ly that "we could tweak a lit­tle here and tweak a lit­tle there. But from the tech­ni­cal ev­i­dence be­fore us, from all the ex­pert ad­vice we have, lo­cal and abroad, it does not seem that way." He said he would ad­vise the pro­test­ers to con­tin­ue talks with the Gov­ern­ment to see what could be done.

"But in terms of a new route for the high­way, the ad­vice we have sug­gests oth­er­wise." Ques­tioned on Warn­er's com­ment, Kublals­ingh said: "Well, the peo­ple will de­cide." He stressed: "We'll con­tin­ue to launch our diplo­mat­ic ac­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment, we'll con­tin­ue to launch our le­gal ac­tions and we'll con­tin­ue to launch very dra­mat­ic ac­tion, af­ter ac­tion, af­ter ac­tion against this de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment. And if it has to fall, so be it."

Kublals­ingh said the pro­test­ers have hired for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Fyard Ho­sein to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against the State, and they were fil­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter. Charles told the meet­ing ear­li­er that the protest was cost­ing the State huge sums of mon­ey dai­ly ,as work was not be­ing al­lowed to con­tin­ue.

"We are in­cur­ring costs be­cause of where they (pro­test­ers) are lo­cat­ed," he added. Charles, a for­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter, said if the pro­test­ers had their camp "a lit­tle low­er down, they could stay there and protest." He said on­ly then would work on the con­nec­tor road be able to take place.

"Why won't you move from the mid­dle of the in­ter­sec­tion and let me fin­ish it? But no, you will not move. He doesn't care if it cost the tax­pay­ers mon­ey every day, he will not move," he said.