Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

NID­CO pres­i­dent speaks

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) Dr Carsen Charles has apol­o­gised for not pro­vid­ing more in­for­ma­tion on the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the $7.5 bil­lion high­way which sparked the hunger strike of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh. His apol­o­gy came hours be­fore Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George meets with the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil to­day.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia at the Cam­p­den He­li­port in Cou­va yes­ter­day, Charles pro­vid­ed a re­port to the me­dia, out­lin­ing de­tails of the con­tro­ver­sial seg­ment of the high­way. Me­dia work­ers were tak­en on a he­li­copter aer­i­al tour of the high­way which weaves away from the Oropouche swamp, through sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties on the pe­riph­ery of the Oropouche basin.

Af­ter weeks of wait­ing in vain for a cost/ben­e­fit analy­sis, so­cial im­pact as­sess­ment and hy­dro­log­i­cal re­port, Charles re­vealed that works from Debe to Siparia are cur­rent­ly be­ing with­held to al­low Nid­co to work through ac­qui­si­tion chal­lenges.

"We were not ready for the ex­tent of the bac­cha­nal and we should have had peo­ple talk­ing about the tech­ni­cal as­pect of this re­port long ago...Peo­ple feel we don't have any doc­u­ments but this is not so," he said as he pulled out a mul­ti-vol­ume re­port ti­tled, "Fi­nal re­port on Fea­si­bil­i­ty and En­gi­neer­ing Vol­ume 1- 4.

The re­port in­clud­ed a copy of the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance, grant­ed in 2005 as well as para­graphs con­cern­ing flood­ing, com­mu­ni­ty de­struc­tion, traf­fic im­pacts and in­te­gral ben­e­fits of the high­way. How­ev­er, he said pro­fes­sion­als in T&T nev­er took the op­por­tu­ni­ty of pro­vid­ing al­ter­na­tives for the high­way but in­stead chose to make com­plaints long af­ter de­signs were com­plet­ed and con­tracts were signed.

"When the op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self, these pro­fes­sion­als nev­er made any com­plaints so they are guilty as well, just as we are guilty of not pro­vid­ing the tech­ni­cal re­views long ago," Charles said. Giv­ing a fi­nan­cial break­down of the costs, Charles said the main con­trac­tor OAS Con­struc­to­ra will be paid more than $5.2 mil­lion.

The en­tire high­way will be built at a cost of $7.5 bil­lion. He added that when ce­ment prices went up, ma­te­r­i­al costs of the high­way es­ca­lat­ed but the Gov­ern­ment sought to pro­tect the Trea­sury by sign­ing a pro­vi­sion­al "es­ca­la­tion cap" so that the con­trac­tor would ab­sorb mount­ing price in­creas­es.

"Un­der the con­tract, OAS is ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing the de­sign of the en­tire high­way. OAS has em­ployed a high­ly re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tant HAL­CROW to pre­pare de­signs that sat­is­fy the con­tract," Charles said. He al­so said ex­ten­sive stud­ies were done on the wet­lands and out of three routes, the cur­rent one was most eco­nom­i­cal.

"We would get our chance to show every­thing in court. We are not a reck­less and de­struc­tive peo­ple. We were all will­ing to talk and ex­change ideas. We are not de­stroy­ing the wet­lands, we are build­ing on the pe­riph­ery of it," Charles said. He not­ed that a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion was be­ing bandied about. Hold­ing up a news­pa­per clip­ping of a de­c­la­ra­tion by Gov­ern­ment that the high­way will bring 27,000 jobs, Charles ad­mit­ted that this fig­ure was "a lit­tle too high."

"This high­way is the on­ly thing that is hap­pen­ing now to fu­el the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. You think a hy­drol­o­gy study can be done in two months? Are we sup­posed to do a new one when it will take an­oth­er year to do an­oth­er im­pact re­port?" Charles said.

He al­so re­vealed that the Point Fortin phase of the high­way had al­ready start­ed as Nid­co had al­ready paid $50 mil­lion to Petrotrin to cap oil­wells. "We have 33 wells that must be capped and this project is un­der way so for those who are say­ing the high­way will nev­er reach Point, this is not true," Charles said.

He said the ac­qui­si­tion process was most chal­leng­ing. How­ev­er, he not­ed that 174 acres of land were pro­vid­ed in Pe­tite Morne, Ste Madeleine to ac­com­mo­date com­mu­ni­ties. Nid­co's se­nior project man­ag­er Earl Wil­son said the ex­ist­ing South Trunk Road would be up­grad­ed to a four-lane high­way and the Gordineau Bridge will be re­built.

Di­rec­tor of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Health and Safe­ty Unit Door­lal Ram­lal said pre­vi­ous al­ter­na­tives pro­posed by res­i­dents would have land­ed "smack in the la­goon." He al­so not­ed that the Ban­warie his­tor­i­cal site or the Namde­v­co mar­ket will not be af­fect­ed by the high­way. He said the cur­rent route weaves through the least pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas and the sev­en in­ter­changes will bring con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the peo­ple of south Trinidad.

MORE ON HIGH­WAY

The project in­volves con­struc­tion of four-lane di­vid­ed high­way. It will be done in sev­er­al phas­es.

These in­clud­ed:

• Gol­con­da to Debe which in­volves the build­ing of 5 km from Gol­con­da to Debe

• Debe to San Fran­cique Road

• San Fran­cique to Fyz­abad In­ter­change

• Fyz­abad In­ter­change to La Brea Con­nec­tor

• La Brea Con­nec­tor to Dun­lop Round­about

• Dum­fries Road to Paria Suites

• Paria Suites to St Mary's Junc­tion

• St Mary's Junc­tion to Mon De­sir In­ter­change.