Yvonne Webb

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan is seek­ing pro­pos­als for the stalled San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project which will gen­er­ate rev­enue and op­por­tu­ni­ties. Each pro­pos­al will be eval­u­at­ed on the ba­sis of par­tic­u­lar cri­te­ria, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said on Sat­ur­day at the open­ing of the San Fer­nan­do West Con­stituen­cy sub-of­fice in La Ro­maine. "It is not enough, to speak of this project in the con­text of what we want the wa­ter­front to look like. It is more im­por­tant to dis­cuss the ben­e­fits of the project, such as the com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, the mi­cro and small busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and the pos­si­bil­i­ties even for ho­tels and con­fer­enc­ing."

She added: "Projects such as these, which will gen­er­ate rev­enue and op­por­tu­ni­ties, are tak­ing cen­tre stage in 2011." She said the project was of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance to her as she want­ed to trans­form the wa­ter­front. Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who is al­so the MP for San Fer­nan­do West, gave an ac­count of her stew­ard­ship for the past eight months, in­clud­ing clear­ing of drains and rivers to pre­vent ma­jor flood­ing, em­ploy­ment, hous­ing and pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion sup­port. She pledged to ded­i­cate par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to find­ing safe hous­es for abused chil­dren and women. In that re­gard, she said, she in­tend­ed to work with the San Fer­nan­do-based Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties to get greater sup­port for chil­dren, as well as ad­vanced sup­port for the SOS Ba­bies at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Cit­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's man­date to "de­liv­er in 2011", Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so vowed to step up her rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all of her con­stituents. She said a San Fer­nan­do West jobs data­base is be­ing com­piled to as­sist con­stituents in find­ing em­ploy­ment. She added: "This un­com­pli­cat­ed sys­tem will work by con­stituents sub­mit­ting their CVs and briefs on their core skills to my of­fice where they will be matched against avail­able va­can­cies. "Once iden­ti­fied, these va­can­cies will be brought to your at­ten­tion, to­geth­er with ad­vice and sup­port on how to go about sub­mit­ting your ap­pli­ca­tions."