Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has as­sured that the Works Min­istry's Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE) will be re­struc­tured with­in the week, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day. Warn­er in­di­cat­ed this af­ter he spoke with the Prime Min­is­ter on the is­sue dur­ing Par­lia­men­tary sit­ting yes­ter­day. Speak­ing af­ter Par­lia­ment, Warn­er said he had in­formed Per­sad-Bisses­sar that he had spo­ken to re­porters ear­li­er on the is­sue. He said the PM then as­sured him that PURE will re­main in his Min­istry and that it would con­tin­ue to de­liv­er more and prompt­ly. Pri­or to the sit­ting Warn­er had told re­porters that a Cab­i­net note to reg­u­larise PURE was re­scind­ed by Cab­i­net in his ab­sence and no one had told him why it was re­scind­ed.

"Every­thing I have achieved in T&T from roads to bridges and drains has been be­cause of PURE. It's vi­tal to Gov­ern­ment-but no­body has told me why it was re­scind­ed," Warn­er had told re­porters. De­fend­ing PURE, Warn­er had said he didn't think that re­scind­ing the Cab­i­net note in his ab­sence was the cor­rect thing to do. Warn­er was asked about a T&T Mir­ror sto­ry which claimed there was con­flict be­tween him­self and Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj and which al­so not­ed that the Cab­i­net note to reg­u­larise PURE had been re­scind­ed. Asked whether he was in the po­lit­i­cal dog­house, Warn­er said: "You think it have any dog­house to keep this dog in? There's no dog­house big enough for me."

"De­vant and I spoke yes­ter­day and nei­ther (is) he nor I am aware of what that Mir­ror sto­ry is about," he added. How­ev­er, Warn­er said, he knew there was some un­easi­ness in the PURE project be­cause the Cab­i­net doc­u­ment that had sought to reg­u­larise PURE's po­si­tion had been re­scind­ed. Say­ing PURE mem­bers cur­rent­ly are in lim­bo since PURE was "be­tween a rock and hard place, Warn­er added: "I am not aware that they are clos­ing PURE down. I, too, have heard it. But if they are clos­ing PURE down, I await to see what they are do­ing. But the fact is, I think that PURE is an as­set to any Gov­ern­ment whether PNM or PP." "From where I stand it would be the most un­for­tu­nate thing they could ever do. I was not in Cab­i­net when the note was re­scind­ed. I was by the doc­tor. I don't know what was the rea­son-no­body has told me and I have asked no­body."

Warn­er said that for the past cou­ple weeks he had been get­ting "no end of wor­ry from Nipdec and PURE". He said he met with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an twice on the mat­ter: "But the mat­ter has not been set­tled and I am wait­ing," Warn­er had added. Warn­er said PURE was" vi­tal to any Gov­ern­ment and any coun­try: "Not every­thing the PNM did was bad or wrong. If it's one thing they did that we have ben­e­fit­ted from, is the cre­ation of PURE - look at the de­vel­op­ment." Warn­er had said that not on­ly would his min­istry be ham­strung by the clo­sure of PURE, but the Gov­ern­ment will be al­so.