Kevon Felmine

As Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions ap­proach, Gov­ern­ment is pump­ing over $220 mil­lion in­to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in a bid to have all projects com­plet­ed by March 2013. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan as he re-opened Short Street in San Fer­nan­do.

Ram­bachan said the road which was closed for the past 40 years, cost $700,000 to re­ha­bil­i­tate and was one of 15 sim­i­lar projects sched­uled for the city.

He al­so boast­ed that it was the first time in lo­cal gov­ern­ment his­to­ry that the min­istry was able to be­gin works with­in one month of a na­tion­al bud­get be­ing read. Ram­bachan said he has al­ready ap­proved 600 projects na­tion­wide and that 24.7 per­cent of the min­istry's Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) fund­ing has al­ready been al­lo­cat­ed.

"You are go­ing to see an ex­plo­sion of works tak­ing place. As I have promised, there are al­ready 600 projects that were ap­proved and ready to go un­der lo­cal gov­ern­ment. It is the first time in the his­to­ry of lo­cal gov­ern­ment that works are com­menc­ing in a fis­cal year, one month af­ter the bud­get has been passed."

"Al­ready we have drawn down 24.7 per­cent of our PSIP for re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions which amounts to $228 mil­lion. We are well on our way and by Feb­ru­ary or March next year, we will fin­ish all projects un­der re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions," he said.

Ram­bachan said that the open­ing of Short Street launch­es a se­ries of works to be com­plet­ed in San Fer­nan­do for the fis­cal year and he de­nied that the ur­gency to get works done had any­thing to with the up­com­ing elec­tions, say­ing that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will win re­gard­less.

He said that peo­ple were sat­is­fied with the gov­er­nance by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. "It is the first time peo­ple are get­ting this kind of speedy de­liv­ery and the re­spon­sive­ness of the Gov­ern­ment. This is some­thing that has not hap­pened for a very long time."

Ram­bachan said dur­ing the last fis­cal year, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions had as­sessed the var­i­ous projects which made it eas­i­er to get ear­ly fund­ing from the fi­nance min­istry. He said the min­istry has al­ready re­ceived $58 mil­lion to be­gin works. He said that al­though gov­ern­ment's mantra is to serve the peo­ple, the nu­mer­ous projects had not caught the at­ten­tion of me­dia.

Al­though sev­er­al oth­er min­istries have re­quest­ed ex­tra fund­ing af­ter the an­nu­al bud­get, Ram­bachan said his min­istry has enough mon­ey to com­plete all projects un­til next year's bud­get.

The min­is­ter al­so vis­it­ed the $10 mil­lion tem­po­rary Mara­bel­la Mar­ket where ex­ten­sion works are be­ing un­der­tak­en to fa­cil­i­tate Sun­day vend­ing. How­ev­er, when Ram­bachan vis­it­ed he found few ven­dors in the mar­ket and saw that some were sell­ing their pro­duce at the road­side near the old fa­cil­i­ties.

Asked why they were there, San Fer­nan­do May­or Dr Navi Mu­radali said that they were ven­dors who had protest­ed against the new fa­cil­i­ty be­cause they felt the vend­ing spaces were in­ad­e­quate. How­ev­er, Ram­bachan in­struct­ed Mu­radali to have the il­le­gal vend­ing area cleared. He said there were suf­fi­cient spaces in the new mar­ket.

Ram­bachan al­so vis­it­ed the new­ly con­struct­ed Vista­bel­la Bridge which links pedes­tri­ans from Vista­bel­la to Mara­bel­la. Al­though there were some con­cerns by res­i­dents that it en­cour­aged crim­i­nals to ven­ture near their home, Mu­radali said it was the on­ly al­ter­na­tive in­fra­struc­ture link­ing the two com­mu­ni­ties over the Mara­bel­la Riv­er. The bridge which cost $340,000 was built us­ing re­cy­cled plas­tic bot­tles.