Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The sto­ry of T&T is one of progress, so says Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie. He said east Trinidad has a prob­lem with hu­man de­vel­op­ment but was con­fi­dent that the coun­try has made sig­nif­i­cant progress in the last 50 years.

Tewarie said ac­cord­ing to da­ta, the progress has been "un­even." He said the Gov­ern­ment was al­ready find­ing ways to ad­dress the in­equities, as re­vealed in the new­ly-launched Hu­man De­vel­op­ment At­las 2012. The at­las, which was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to pro­vide a snap­shot of the coun­try's hu­man de­vel­op­ment up to 2010, al­lows the Gov­ern­ment to make in­ter­ven­tions in ar­eas that need im­prove­ment.

Tewarie said the at­las, the first in T&T, was based on da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO). The at­las in­cludes the First Na­tion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex, In­equal­i­ty Ad­just­ed Na­tion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex, Gen­der In­equal­i­ty and Mul­ti-di­men­sion­al Pover­ty In­dex, as well as a col­lec­tion of maps that show a com­par­a­tive spa­tial analy­sis of hu­man de­vel­op­ment cat­a­logues at the na­tion­al lev­el.

Tewarie said: "The val­ues of the at­las are man­i­fold. "It gives us a base­line to es­tab­lish where the pop­u­la­tion was in terms of pover­ty, hu­man de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and crime is­sues up to about 2010." He said it gave a re­gion­al spread of the da­ta and in­di­cat­ed what parts of the coun­try were do­ing bet­ter or worse than oth­ers. He said the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing to pro­ceed in a thought­ful way to ad­dress some of the is­sues raised in the at­las.

He spoke to the Sun­day Guardian at his of­fice, Lev­el 13, Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, on Ju­ly 16. "While we are do­ing na­tion­al pol­i­cy, it gives us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to look at re­gions and to see whether there are any spe­cif­ic in­ter­ven­tions we can make to do things to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of peo­ple and ad­dress the is­sue of in­equity across the board," he said.

The at­las will al­so al­low the Gov­ern­ment to mea­sure its progress. Tewarie said: "We are try­ing to bring sci­en­tif­ic pre­ci­sion to the poli­cies that we make and the at­las now al­lows us to do that. "We know that we have a prob­lem on the en­tire east­ern part of the coun­try. "We know, for in­stance, that we have a rur­al/ur­ban di­vide, in terms of ben­e­fits to the pop­u­la­tion and con­di­tions of the pop­u­la­tion."

Some of the Gov­ern­ment's plans:

• Land Use Pol­i­cy in Sep­tem­ber

• Na­tion­al Phys­i­cal De­vel­op­ment Plan

• Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of De­vel­op­ment Bill

• De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and de­vo­lu­tion of pow­er; greater au­ton­o­my to lo­cal gov­ern­ment

• Na­tion­al Plan­ning Ca­pac­i­ty to deal with de­vel­op­men­tal is­sues

• Ex­pan­sion of Rivulet Road, Cou­va

• In­vad­er's Bay project

• In­creased num­ber of op­por­tu­ni­ties for vend­ing at Ch­aguara­mas; de­vel­op­ment of Hart's Cut Bay

• Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Port-of-Spain

• Pro­pos­al to de­vel­op south-west penin­su­la

PoS can­not be run by cor­po­ra­tion alone

Tewarie said he was will­ing to work hand in hand with Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing to de­vel­op the city. He said Lee Sing was a per­son he could work with but he op­er­at­ed too much like a one-man show. He said he want­ed to hold a se­ries of dis­cus­sion with him and get him in­volved.

"I have made mis­takes and I would like to say that in some ways the may­or has made some mis­takes too. "The may­or can­not go in­to Wood­brook and in­vite my Town and Coun­try Plan­ning peo­ple the day be­fore and ex­pect them to show up in the night in some­body's busi­ness place to make an as­sess­ment of their sit­u­a­tion.

"I am not about to do busi­ness like that," he said. Tewarie said he want­ed to work with Lee Sing to achieve peace and pros­per­i­ty in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple. He said, "The city can't be run by the city of Port-of-Spain alone." Tewarie said the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to re­ha­bil­i­tate the city com­mer­cial­ly. He said while the city was be­ing de­vel­oped, the is­sue of de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and eco­nom­ic growth across the coun­try would al­so be ad­dressed.

Town and Coun­try un­der re­form

A ma­jor part of the Di­vi­sion of Town and Coun­try Plan­ning will now fall un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Tewarie said. He said there was ma­jor re­form tak­ing place. He said four pi­lot projects were un­der way in To­ba­go, Tu­na­puna/ Tal­paro, Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do. Tewarie said, "We are us­ing those pi­lots to make sure that when we do it, we don't end up in more prob­lems than we have now."

He added that 80 per cent of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing for con­struc­tion and ap­provals will go to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and will be dis­trib­uted among the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. "The cit­i­zen will still have the right of ap­peal...we will have a trans­par­ent process for that and for the big gov­ern­ment projects, we have a co-or­di­nat­ing team that will morph in­to a Na­tion­al Plan­ning Ca­pac­i­ty," he said.

More in­fo

The Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex is a sum­ma­ry of hu­man de­vel­op­ment that mea­sures the av­er­age achieve­ments in a coun­try in three ba­sic di­men­sions of hu­man de­vel­op­ment-a long and healthy life, knowl­edge and a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing. The Na­tion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex was de­vel­oped by the CSO to mea­sure the lev­el of hu­man de­vel­op­ment in T&T and its sub-re­gions. (Adapt­ed from the At­las.)

Sum­ma­ry of At­las re­sults Health, ed­u­ca­tion and in­come:

• In re­view­ing the di­men­sions of health, ed­u­ca­tion and in­come for the In­equal­i­ty Ad­just­ed Na­tion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex, the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro, To­ba­go, San­gre Grande re­gions ranked low­est

Loss in hu­man de­vel­op­ment due to in­equal­i­ty in health, ed­u­ca­tion and in­come:

• To­ba­go, Point Fortin and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co had the great­est to­tal per­cent­age loss­es

Chron­ic ill­ness­es:

• Pe­nal/Debe, Ma­yaro/Rio Claro, Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co re­gions were least af­fect­ed by in­equal­i­ty in terms of long and healthy life

• To­ba­go, Port-of-Spain, San­gre Grande and San Juan/Laven­tille were the most im­pact­ed by in­equal­i­ty

Ado­les­cent fer­til­i­ty rate

• San­gre Grande had the high­est rate at 75.2 per 1,000 women

• Pe­nal/Debe had the low­est-28.8 per 1,000 women.