Resh­ma Ra­goonath

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh says le­gal steps are be­ing tak­en to per­ma­nent­ly stop the Debe/Mon De­sir leg of the Point Fortin to San Fer­nan­do High­way Project. This is in re­sponse to Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend that phase of the con­struc­tion. Warn­er, speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing of a Pro­gramme Up­grade for Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion project at Crown Trace, En­ter­prise on Wednes­day, said work will be tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed for three months as of­fi­cials re­view al­ter­na­tive routes for the dis­put­ed part of the bil­lion dol­lar project. Warn­er's de­ci­sion came days af­ter irate res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion held by his min­istry in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO), at Debe High School on Sat­ur­day.Kublals­ingh ex­pressed scep­ti­cism about the sud­den de­ci­sion to sus­pend the con­struc­tion. He al­so dis­missed it as an­oth­er at­tempt to bam­boo­zle the pub­lic.

Kublals­ingh who heads the High­way Re-Route Move­ment (HRM) said: "They can­not start this part of the high­way to Mon De­sir be­cause they have not fi­nalised any com­pen­sa­tion or re­lo­ca­tion plan. It is just an­oth­er at­tempt to bam­boo­zle the pub­lic that they are giv­ing a con­ces­sion to the peo­ple when in fact they are not giv­ing any con­ces­sion at all." The en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist re­mained adamant that the res­i­dents do not want a high­way be­tween Debe and Mon De­sir and across the Oropouche la­goon. He said they have lost con­fi­dence in Warn­er and want now to deal with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. "We much pre­fer to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter who is the fi­nal ar­bi­tra­tor in this process. She is still amenable to log­ic and clear ar­gu­ment and still sen­si­tive to the needs of the peo­ple," Kublals­ingh said. He said at­tor­ney Fyard Ho­sein is in the process of draft­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter for gov­ern­ment to cease that part of the project which is in ques­tion. "We are in the process of gath­er­ing names of per­sons who will be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the high­way to sub­mit with our pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter," he said. Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is ex­pect­ed to take up the HRM's case.