Shal­iza Has­sanali

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj threat­ens that should any mis­con­duct be dis­cov­ered with the fea­si­bil­i­ty study un­der­tak­en by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment on the scrapped Rapid Rail project, ac­tion will be tak­en. Ma­haraj was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's (PTSC) rapid tran­sit bus ser­vice at Five Rivers, Arou­ca. The ser­vice, a pi­lot project which Ma­haraj promis­es will af­ford ef­fi­cien­cy and re­li­a­bil­i­ty to com­muters, starts to­mor­row be­tween Port-of-Spain and Ari­ma. The launch was wit­nessed by PTSC chair­man Dr Vin­cent Lasse, deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er, op­er­a­tions Brain Juanette, di­rec­tor Ash­vani Ma­haraj and a com­ple­ment of bus dri­vers.

The sched­ule de­mands that every 15 min­utes a bus will de­part Port-of-Spain to serve the needs of the trav­el­ling pub­lic along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. Ma­haraj said while PTSC's aim was to im­prove its ser­vice and to de­liv­er on the rapid bus sys­tem, he will al­so look at the ex­pen­di­ture of the Rapid Rail fea­si­bil­i­ty study which cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions and did not bring any tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to the coun­try. The study was con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine whether the rail sys­tem could al­le­vi­ate the frus­trat­ing traf­fic grid­lock that en­velops sev­er­al ar­eas of the coun­try.

"I will look to see if there is any mis­con­duct. De­pend­ing on what I see, you know the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is the ad­vis­er of the State. That would be my first port of call to re­fer the doc­u­men­ta­tion to him for his re­view and con­sul­ta­tion and to seek guid­ance ac­cord­ing­ly." The re­port which was placed in two box­es at the Min­istry of Works has been gath­er­ing dust and will soon be trans­ferred to Ma­haraj's desk. "Once the files reach, I will deal with it. I have no doubt that files could be miss­ing. At PTSC we could not find con­tracts for the use of cer­tain bus­es for the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion." Though Ma­haraj said the re­port will not be his pri­ma­ry fo­cus he in­tends to deal with it.