Michelle Loubon

Diego Mar­tin North East MP Colm Im­bert has ap­pealed to Gov­ern­ment to build elec­tric­i­ty lines in the Cen­tral and South ar­eas and a pow­er gen­er­a­tion plant at Beetham to erad­i­cate elec­tric­i­ty prob­lems in north Trinidad. He is­sued this call dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on a mo­tion of the Hous­es' Fi­nance Com­mit­tee which dealt with sup­ple­men­ta­tion and vari­a­tion of sums in the 2012 bud­get at Par­lia­ment on Fri­day. Im­bert lament­ed Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents were reel­ing from reg­u­lar pow­er out­ages since the pow­er gen­er­a­tion plant at Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, had run its shelf life.

He said: "Over the last six months, there have been reg­u­lar pow­er out­ages. The pow­er gen­er­a­tion plant at Wright­son Road has reached the age. There are plans to con­struct a new pow­er gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty for the north Trinidad in the Beetham." He al­so claimed T&T was un­able to utilise the 450 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty. Im­bert felt they should build a mega watt elec­tric­i­ty plant and called on them to con­struct trans­mis­sion lines. "Any sen­si­ble gov­ern­ment with a smat­ter­ing of pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion would have re­alised the prob­lem in north Trinidad and full ca­pac­i­ty in south Trinidad. They have not put in the pow­er trans­mis­sion lines in Pt Lisas. The de­mand ex­ceeds the sup­ply. There is no con­nec­tion to the na­tion­al grid in Trinidad...to put in the trans­mis­sion lines in the Pt Lisas ar­eas."

Im­bert of­fered ad­vice. He said: "Build the trans­mis­sion lines in Cen­tral and north Trinidad and send the elec­tric­i­ty up to the rest of the coun­try. Pok­ing fun at the Gov­ern­ment he said, "They came in­to of­fice by ac­ci­dent." Com­ment­ing on the Cli­co is­sue, he said it was still left to be seen whether Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an had suc­cess­ful­ly ar­rest­ed the de­ba­cle since there were a num­ber of pend­ing court mat­ters. Slip­ping in­to sar­casm, he said: "Peo­ple are hap­py... Peo­ple are com­fort­able with this Cli­co plan. Three weeks ago, Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers com­plained. We shall see whether the Dook­er­an plan is a won­der­ful plan" "In the land of a blind, the one-eyed man is a king," Im­bert added.