The cham­ber in­deed wel­comes the re­cent an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Jack Warn­er, that the Gov­ern­ment plans to spend $1.2 bil­lion on ma­jor road re­pairs and in­fra­struc­ture. The Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that $750 mil­lion is to be spent on the re­pair of roads, land­slips and land­slides and the con­struc­tion of re­tain­ing walls. Not on­ly is this mon­ey well spent, but, if prop­er­ly man­aged, will re­sult in a tremen­dous im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of life, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and vir­tu­al­ly spell the end of the week­ly demon­stra­tions by rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in deep South, Cen­tral and East for their roads to be fixed. Pleas, in some cas­es, al­most 20 years old! In the cham­ber's opin­ion, it is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able that in a coun­try of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple, blessed with a pitch lake, raw ma­te­r­i­al for road con­struc­tion, idle re­sources in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and a na­tion­al un­em­ploy­ment rate of 6.7 per cent (ac­cord­ing to the last pub­lished sta­tis­tics from the Cen­tral Bank) pro­duc­tive use of these re­serves took this long to be put to work. Un­doubt­ed­ly, such ex­pen­di­ture will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on dai­ly traf­fic con­ges­tion. Clos­er scruti­ny of the man­ner in which this $1.2 bil­lion will be dis­trib­uted, dis­clos­es that Moru­ga/Table­land is slat­ed to re­ceive a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of this bud­get to the tune of some $44 mil­lion. This rur­al com­mu­ni­ty car­ries the du­bi­ous ti­tle of "the land­slip cap­i­tal of T&T." There were 14 land­slips on one stretch alone, and the an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter Warn­er of this pro­posed ex­pen­di­ture should be most wel­come.

Apart from this, con­stituen­cies in the con­trol of the Op­po­si­tion-Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Diego Mar­tin North East, Diego Mar­tin West, Laven­tille/Mor­vant, Port-of-Spain South and San Fer­nan­do East-will al­so be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of sub­stan­tial amounts of this vote. In light of this mag­na­nim­i­ty and equal­i­ty of treat­ment by the Gov­ern­ment, pre­cious Par­lia­men­tary time will not be squan­dered in seek­ing to make com­plaints of bias with a view to hav­ing them ad­dressed. By the same to­ken, the cham­ber ex­pects that the Gov­ern­ment would have ra­tio­nalised the sup­ply/ex­pen­di­ture by some mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with the var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der whose ju­ris­dic­tion the roads to be re­paired fall. Min­is­ter Warn­er, ad­dress­ing cham­ber mem­bers in Jan­u­ary, promised 40 to 50 per cent lo­cal con­tent for the ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way. We al­so look for­ward to see­ing the min­is­ter con­tin­ue his cam­paign for an even greater per­cent­age in these ad­di­tion­al projects, es­pe­cial­ly with re­gard to labour. The cham­ber al­so wel­comes the min­is­ter's an­nounce­ment that a con­tract has been award­ed to con­struct the $519 mil­lion in­ter­change at Grand Bazaar. No doubt, the Gov­ern­ment is aware of the dai­ly gripe by dri­vers along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, from Cen­tral and South as well as from our cap­i­tal city about the dai­ly con­ges­tion which this in­ter­sec­tion still at­tracts, even with the ad­vent of the over­pass for traf­fic trav­el­ling from North to South. The pos­i­tive feed­back from those who now ben­e­fit from the re­moval of the traf­fic lights at the in­ter­sec­tion with Aranguez, to­geth­er with the ex­tra lane on the Beetham High­way for those en­ter­ing the cap­i­tal city am­ply jus­ti­fy the ex­pen­di­ture of these huge sums of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey. The con­tin­u­ing im­prove­ment and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of ser­vices by the PTSC, the com­ing to fruition of Min­is­ter Warn­er's "park and ride" fa­cil­i­ties, and, even, for­mer Min­is­ter Im­bert's car-pool cul­ture change, must now be se­ri­ous­ly pur­sued by the Gov­ern­ment, in or­der to max­imise the pro­duc­tive use of all these im­prove­ments to the na­tion­al road sys­tem.

In ad­di­tion, the Gov­ern­ment must in­cen­tivise and en­cour­age a re­turn to the use of bi­cy­cles, CNG and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly modes of con­veyance, as it seems to be tak­ing an ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly lengthy pe­ri­od of time for these types of mea­sures, con­tained in our last na­tion­al bud­get, to be ful­ly op­er­a­tionalised. Ac­cord­ing to the me­te­o­rol­o­gists, the coun­try has en­tered the dry sea­son and, no doubt, the Works Min­is­ter is be­ing coun­selled by his tech­nocrats to com­mence these re­pairs and works, as well as the clear­ing of drains, de­silt­ing of rivers, con­struc­tion of con­tain­ment ponds and widen­ing of chan­nels, in prepa­ra­tion for the next rainy sea­son. The cham­ber adds its voice to this, as the dam­age and de­struc­tion re­sult­ing from pre­vi­ous omis­sion and ne­glect with re­spect to the con­duct of these ex­er­cis­es are all too fresh in our minds. How­ev­er, in the res­olute anx­i­ety to look af­ter the needs of our cit­i­zen­ry, the cham­ber urges the Gov­ern­ment to re­mem­ber, "More haste, less speed." Let us en­sure that haste al­so im­pos­es the prime min­is­te­r­i­al cri­te­ria in all of these con­tracts as with that rel­a­tive to the con­struc­tion of the high­way to Point Fortin, ie, strict su­per­vi­sion, in­sis­tence on high qual­i­ty, on-time per­for­mance, no over­runs, penal­ties on sub-con­trac­tors for late de­liv­ery, war­ranties and ap­pro­pri­ate re­ten­tion monies, so that the claims of the min­is­ter with re­spect to time­li­ness and no cost over­runs in re­la­tion to the re­moval of the traf­fic lights at El So­cor­ro, may al­so ring true with his $1.2 bil­lion ex­pen­di­ture. The con­tin­u­ing over­all de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try and the for­ward plan­ning to cater for it are cru­cial and ex­pen­sive if projects of added val­ue are to be the re­sult. Good gov­er­nance has to be both man­dat­ed and in­stilled.