SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Nid­co) will over­see the re­lo­ca­tion of 300 house­holds to 200 acres of land in prepa­ra­tion for the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin high­way, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has said. He said so while ad­dress­ing the T&T Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber at a meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day. Warn­er said Nid­co was cho­sen over the Es­tate? Man­age­ment?Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­B­DC) in or­der to avoid any bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays to the mega project. Warn­er said Cab­i­net agreed last Thurs­day to re­lease the 200 acres of land to move the house­holds, farm­ers, places of wor­ship and schools.

He said the project would al­so pro­vide em­ploy­ment for the peo­ple of the area where he said un­em­ploy­ment was around 18 per cent.Warn­er told the cham­ber more than $1.5 bil­lion in lo­cal in­put and 10,000 work­ers would be need­ed for the $7.2 bil­lion project. He said most of that would be in the form of lo­cal ma­te­ri­als, as ag­gre­gates, ce­ment, steel, as­phalt and con­crete. He said some of the ag­gre­gate would come from Stud­ley Park, To­ba­go. How­ev­er, he said, while Stud­ley Park pro­duced a high qual­i­ty of ag­gre­gate the in­fra­struc­ture in the area was un­der­de­vel­oped for min­ing.

Warn­er said work would start on Au­gust 28 at the Gol­con­da in­ter­change and on Oc­to­ber 27 at Debe.

He said the high­way would be 47 kilo­me­tres long with four lanes and 2.5 km with two lanes and would stop in at the round­about in Point Fortin, near Dun­lop.