RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the new traf­fic plan in Diego Mar­tin is "strange" and "use­less." Im­bert said the project was es­tab­lished un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion and work start­ed in March 2010 but for no ap­par­ent rea­son was stopped a few months af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion last year.

He said it was the most im­por­tant road/traf­fic man­age­ment project in north­west Trinidad. He said the project would have been com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber last year if Gov­ern­ment had fol­lowed the time­line.

Im­bert was speak­ing last Fri­day at a press con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain. He said Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er had said re­sump­tion of works would con­tin­ue on March 28, April 11 and May 9 this year for com­ple­tion of three phas­es of the project.

Im­bert said: "Noth­ing has hap­pened. Noth­ing has been done. "And then you would have seen with­in the last cou­ple days this ill-ad­vised traf­fic scheme that has been im­ple­ment­ed in the vicin­i­ty of Star­lite Shop­ping Mall and that traf­fic scheme has been tout­ed as a so­lu­tion to all of the traf­fic prob­lems in Diego Mar­tin." He said as far as he was told, Warn­er's so­lu­tion was not a so­lu­tion. He said in Feb­ru­ary Warn­er said sec­tion three no­tices for land ac­qui­si­tion had been pub­lished and served on land own­ers and that sec­tion four no­tices were be­ing pre­pared. Sec­tion three no­tice serves as an in­ten­tion to a land own­er while sec­tion four no­ti­fies of Gov­ern­ment's au­thor­i­ty to en­ter the land.

Im­bert claimed there was no record of sec­tion four no­tices and that sec­tion three no­tices were re­pub­lished on Au­gust 25. He said un­der his tenure, sec­tion three no­tices had al­ready been pub­lished around May last year. He said: "We are ask­ing the min­is­ter to ex­plain that. There are all sorts of rea­sons why this has hap­pened. The most char­i­ta­ble ex­pla­na­tion will be that they just bun­gled the whole thing.

"They didn't fol­low through with what they were sup­posed to do." Im­bert said traf­fic con­ges­tion has been a prob­lem in Diego Mar­tin for years and that his gov­ern­ment had tak­en ac­tion and start­ed the project.

He said it was a per­ma­nent, prac­ti­cal and fea­si­ble so­lu­tion to the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion.

Im­bert said: "There is ab­solute­ly no ex­cuse or rea­son why the new Gov­ern­ment com­ing in... be­cause Cab­i­net had ap­proved the fund­ing and the min­is­ter him­self ad­mit­ted that in his state­ment in Par­lia­ment as well. "Cab­i­net had ap­proved the fund­ing for the land ac­qui­si­tion as well and there is no ex­cuse why the land ac­qui­si­tion didn't con­tin­ue in Ju­ly 2010 and there is no ex­cuse why the con­struc­tion work didn't con­tin­ue and there is no ex­cuse why the res­i­dents of Diego Mar­tin are not now en­joy­ing a prop­er high­way sys­tem be­tween Vic­to­ria Gar­dens and Ac­ton Court." He said he didn't know why Warn­er came up with such a "strange ex­per­i­men­tal traf­fic scheme."