Richard Lord

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, con­firmed the 2011/12 na­tion­al bud­get would be read at Tow­er D at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road, Port of Spain. He did so dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. Mooni­lal said he could not re­veal the date as this was ex­pect­ed to be done by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said the mil­lion dol­lar re­fur­bish­ment work at the build­ing was com­plet­ed with­in time and bud­get by the new Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott).

Mooni­lal al­so said Cab­i­net agreed to im­pose a to­tal ban on the hunt­ing of tur­tles in T&T. He said the hunt­ing sea­son will re­main closed be­cause of the state of emer­gency. He said the au­thor­i­ties in To­ba­go have been giv­ing li­cences to hunt and it was ex­pect­ed that the THA would be ad­vised to re­voke those per­mits. Mooni­lal al­so said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and Ude­cot has had to pay a to­tal of $1 bil­lion in out­stand­ing debt to con­trac­tors for work done un­der the Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment.