Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Ac­tivists op­posed to the Mon De­sir to Debe phase of the Point Fortin High­way yes­ter­day wel­comed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to mi­cro-man­age the bil­lion-dol­lar project. They be­lieve Per­sad-Bisses­sar will give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to and act on their rec­om­men­da­tion for an al­ter­na­tive route. Ac­cord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) lec­tur­er Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, that phase of the high­way cuts across the Oropouche La­goon and will af­fect at least 13 com­mu­ni­ties. He told the T&T Guardian many of the ac­tivists op­posed to the phase have the "fullest con­fi­dence" that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar will re­view the route.

Kublals­ingh said the Prime Min­is­ter had been "very ju­di­cious" in mat­ters she per­son­al­ly dealt with such as the smelter plant and the 1,000 acres of land in the Point Lisas East area giv­en to for­mer Ca­roni work­ers. "In this mat­ter, too, I be­lieve if she re­gards it with the same log­ic and good sense she will say 'no' to this part of the high­way too," he said. "We think her in­flu­ence will make a change." Last Wednes­day Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­vened an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team meet­ing with Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine at Dr Roodal Mooni­lal's con­stituen­cy of­fice in Debe to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing the high­way project. She said she had no choice but to take charge of the project and mi­cro-man­age.

Yes­ter­day Kublals­ingh said his group has writ­ten to one of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­vis­ers seek­ing a meet­ing with her to present their pro­posed al­ter­na­tives for the sec­ond phase of the high­way. "We will present a for­mal plea to her when we meet giv­ing her al­ter­na­tives to the route. We are prepar­ing a re­port from hy­drol­o­gists and oth­er tech­ni­cal peo­ple to present," he said. He said the al­ter­na­tive route is much more cost-ef­fec­tive and will not in­volve re­lo­ca­tion of res­i­dents and de­struc­tion of com­mu­ni­ties. Kublals­ingh said it would be more fea­si­ble to re-route the high­way west­wards from Debe to Mos­qui­to Creek.

"They can build a high­way link be­tween the Debe and Gol­con­da sec­tion and the north­ern end of the Mos­qui­to Creek. There are no hous­es there. It is two to three miles long. "There will be no re­lo­ca­tion costs. You would not have to pay for the land be­cause it is State lands," he said. Kublals­ingh said the ar­gu­ment for the high­way sug­gests it is go­ing to pro­vide con­nec­tiv­i­ty. "We are say­ing the high­way is go­ing to pro­vide dis-con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dis­em­pow­er­ment to al­ready em­pow­ered com­mu­ni­ties be­cause they al­ready have pow­er­ful, es­tab­lished agrar­i­an lifestyles," he said.