Camille Clarke

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Labour Rudy In­dars­ingh and chair­man of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Nafeesa Mo­hammed ap­peared to be at log­ger­heads and were en­gaged in some ver­bal spar­ring when a sec­tion of the new San Juan Mar­ket was hand­ed over last Fri­day.

The two of­fi­cials spoke to a crowd of stake­hold­ers, gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and ven­dors at the for­mal hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny of Build­ing Two and Build­ing Three. Mo­hammed, a for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tor, who has been at the at the fore­front of ad­dress­ing ven­dors' is­sues at the mar­ket, voiced her opin­ion.

"With the change of Gov­ern­ment in May 2010, this project suf­fered a hic­cup as there seemed to have been a de­sire to scale it down and re­vert to the old shed-like con­cept of a mar­ket," Mo­hammed said. "Thank­ful­ly, when the new coun­cil of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was sworn in­to of­fice in Au­gust 2010, we were able to come to­geth­er and con­vince the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and oth­er mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment about the sig­nif­i­cance of this project for the burgess­es of the re­gion and here we are to­day.

"This project is with­in bud­get and I ap­peal to the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter to as­sist us by ap­prov­ing the re­quest for the con­tin­gen­cies to fit out the build­ings." She fur­ther de­scribed the mar­ket as a "dream that be­came a re­al­i­ty," and thanked all mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment and stake­hold­ers past and present, in­clud­ing late Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Dhan­raj Singh.

In­dars­ingh ex­tend­ed greet­ings to the gath­er­ing and then spoke of the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the coun­try and the project. "We are very pleased to be as­so­ci­at­ed with this par­tic­u­lar mar­ket com­plex," he said. "We are mov­ing to­wards com­ple­tion and it is part of Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to en­sure the mar­ket is un­der its purview and its up­grade is in­clu­sive of all and those who utilise the fa­cil­i­ty should feel a sense of pride.

"Gov­ern­ment is fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing to the peo­ple of T&T...There was nev­er a de­lib­er­ate plot to scale down the project. When there is a change in gov­ern­ment, it re­serves the right to re­view and find a way for­ward to sat­is­fy its com­mit­ment to the cit­i­zen­ry.

"There is a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Gov­ern­ment re­serves the right to re­view the mon­ey be­ing spent prop­er­ly on the project and to en­sure it is com­plet­ed on time and stay in the frame­work of $52 mil­lion. "There was no clan­des­tine mo­tive to­wards com­ple­tion of the mar­ket...We have a deep sense of di­a­logue and true ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the needs of the burgess­es and sat­is­fy­ing 150,000 who will use the fa­cil­i­ties."