At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that Gov­ern­ment could be sued for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by the con­trac­tors of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way if the High­way Re-route Move­ment pro­test­ers are not im­me­di­ate­ly dealt with to en­sure the project is not held back. "I am very con­cerned, as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, that if we do not move swift­ly to con­tin­ue the work on that high­way project, we will be open­ing up our­selves on a risk ex­po­sure un­der the terms of that con­tract," Ram­lo­gan said. He was speak­ing af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 16th meet­ing of the Le­gal Af­fairs Com­mit­tee of Cari­com held at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. The AG al­so warned that be­cause of the group's ac­tions, the econ­o­my could be crip­pled.

Say­ing the High­way Re-route Move­ment was not go­ing to as­sist fi­nan­cial­ly if the State was sued, Ram­lo­gan said: "But when the Gov­ern­ment has to find that mon­ey to pay to the con­trac­tors, it is go­ing to mean less beds in the hos­pi­tals, less mon­ey for lap­tops in the schools and gen­er­al­ly less mon­ey to im­ple­ment our poli­cies. "You cre­ate the ba­sis of in­sta­bil­i­ty in a coun­try. The econ­o­my could be crip­pled by block­ing ma­jor gov­ern­ment projects fund­ed by ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing agen­cies." Ram­lo­gan al­so ques­tioned whether the pres­ence of the camp­site at the M2 Ring Road in Debe was law­ful in the first in­stance. He said that was the crit­i­cal is­sue to be ad­dressed. "We have to be care­ful that we don't en­cour­age law­less­ness in this coun­try...law­less­ness must be dis­cour­aged and root­ed out in any form if we are to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­vance and to solve the crime prob­lem," Ram­lo­gan said.

He said a group of in­di­vid­u­als must not be al­lowed to rail­road de­vel­op­men­tal projects and ac­cused the mem­bers of the High­way Re-route Move­ment of "play­ing games" to win pub­lic sym­pa­thy. He al­so urged the pub­lic not to make mar­tyrs out of the pro­test­ers. "Is it that a group of pro­test­ers could sim­ply go around the Red House or on the high­way and plant a few jhan­di (Hin­du re­li­gious flags), in­vite two Ba­ba and do two pu­ja and say the spot is con­se­crat­ed and you can't move them? "What right do they have to be there? If you do not have the right to oc­cu­py those lands, then you ought not to have been there in the first place," Ram­lo­gan said.