SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Pro­gramme for the Up­grade of Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (Pure) will kick off with 166 projects cost­ing $300 mil­lion. This was an­nounced by Jack Warn­er, the Ch­agua­nas West MP and Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture yes­ter­day. Warn­er was speak­ing with re­porters while at­tend­ing to an es­ti­mat­ed 300-plus peo­ple who came to his Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day seek­ing as­sis­tance.

He said the pro­gramme will get un­der­way sub­ject to the ap­proval of Nipdec. He said 150 con­trac­tors would be em­ployed for the projects. The Works Min­is­ter said he plans to en­gage in some "poach­ing" of for­mer em­ploy­ees of Pure who had gone to seek em­ploy­ment else­where when the pro­gramme was frozen last year. Warn­er said the for­mer em­ploy­ees are will­ing to come back even though the salaries of­fered would be less.

Warn­er said he had met with the Prime Min­is­ter on this mat­ter last week and it was agreed that roads in ur­gent need of re­pairs would be tack­led. Cit­ing some ex­am­ples he said work would be done on the Na­pari­ma-Ma­yaro Road, Tor­rib Trace, The South­ern Main Road, Latchoos Road, the East­ern Main Road and the land­slips at Matu­ra and Moru­ga.

Warn­er said up to 4,000 peo­ple would get im­me­di­ate em­ploy­ment on these projects. Warn­er, who was re-elect­ed as chair­man of the UNC on March 24, said the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive of the par­ty will meet soon and the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar would speak on these mat­ters.

They al­so dis­cussed sev­er­al mat­ters which he said the PM would an­nounce in time. These in­clude dates for the par­ty's Na­tion­al Con­gress, Women's Con­gress and Youth Con­gress. Warn­er said he in­tends to dis­cuss the com­put­er­is­ing of the vot­ing lists for par­ty mem­bers and al­so a longer mem­ber­ship pe­ri­od of pos­si­bly five years. As it stands, mem­bers apart from life mem­bers have to re­new their mem­ber­ship an­nu­al­ly.

Warn­er said he was hap­py to be back as chair­man and will­ing to work with all elect­ed per­sons, in­clud­ing deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Mar­lene Coudray so as to make the coun­try bet­ter.

Jack gives ad­vice on go­ing up against Kam­la

He gave some ad­vice to peo­ple who have in­ten­tions of go­ing up for the post of the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader next year. He said any­one who be­lieves they can beat Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be a very "stu­pid" per­son. Warn­er said he does not know of any­one who is ca­pa­ble of fill­ing her shoes. He said the par­ty should not get side­tracked next year but in­stead it should be prepar­ing for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions as well as the gen­er­al elec­tions.