Yvonne Webb

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SBA) Daphne Bartlett says the coun­try needs the high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin no mat­ter what. Sup­port for the build­ing of the ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Point Fortin, in its orig­i­nal form, al­so came from pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber (PDC) Lin­coln Rag­birs­ingh. Both busi­ness heads crit­i­cised the low lev­el in­to which a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, or­gan­ised by the Min­istry of Works and the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) on the is­sue turned out on Sat­ur­day at the Debe High School. The ac­tivist group, called the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM) head­ed by Wayne Kublals­ingh, put up some stiff, vo­cal op­po­si­tion as Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters at­tempt­ed to ex­plain the ra­tio­nale for con­struct­ing the high­way along the pro­posed route. The ac­tivists are op­posed to the con­struc­tion of a por­tion of the high­way, be­tween Debe to Mon De­sir, which they claimed would dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ties, de­stroy wet­lands and cause se­vere flood­ing.

That phase of the project has been put on hold for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion to take place. "We don't want that on hold," Bartlett said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. She said over the years her as­so­ci­a­tion had been ad­vo­cat­ing not on­ly for the ex­ten­sion of the high­way but al­so for the con­struc­tion of a mod­ern Point Fortin area hos­pi­tal and a wa­ter taxi ser­vice be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin. She added: "When we pro­posed a fer­ry be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain, peo­ple laughed at us and now we have the wa­ter taxi com­mut­ing be­tween the two cities. "Sim­i­lar­ly, there are so many peo­ple com­mut­ing be­tween Point Fortin and San Fer­nan­do and go­ing to Point Fortin by road is hor­ren­dous." Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said plans for the wa­ter-taxi ser­vice be­tween Point Fortin and San Fer­nan­do have been shelved for a fea­si­bil­i­ty study to be un­der­tak­en.

Ma­haraj said so in Par­lia­ment two weeks ago in re­sponse to a a query by the Op­po­si­tion. Bartlett said she was guid­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's com­mit­ment that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) would guide the process. She added: "While we do that, to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment, we must take cer­tain ac­tion, with­in rea­son, for progress." Rag­birs­ingh, who at­tend­ed the con­sul­ta­tion, con­firmed his or­gan­i­sa­tion's sup­port for the high­way con­struc­tion in its orig­i­nal form. He said that would de­vel­op more com­mu­ni­ties and vil­lages, al­le­vi­ate traf­fic con­ges­tion and spawn new build­ings and busi­ness­es. He said it was a painstak­ing task to get out of Pe­nal/Debe at any time of the day, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing peak hours. Rag­birs­ingh wel­comed fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion to ed­u­cate the pub­lic, say­ing Sat­ur­day's con­fronta­tion could have been avoid­ed, if Gov­ern­ment had en­gaged in ef­fec­tive con­sul­ta­tion pri­or to the start of con­struc­tion.