Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Pro­fes­sor Win­ston Suite says Gov­ern­ment should re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion on the in­tro­duc­tion of the rapid rail project. Suite, a lec­tur­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), made the state­ment on Mon­day as he ad­dressed UTT's re­sponse to the 2012/2013 bud­get. The fo­rum was held at the South Cam­pus of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts, Todd Street, San Fer­nan­do.

The mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar project was stopped when the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship took of­fice in 2010. How­ev­er, Suite be­lieves this was not a wise de­vel­op­men­tal move. "I be­lieve we have to re­turn to the ques­tion of a rail trans­port link­ing north Trinidad and south Trinidad... part­ly for pas­sen­gers, part­ly for goods," he said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed the project should not be lim­it­ed to North-South trans­port but "we have to look at some form of rapid trans­port that con­nects the west of the is­land to the east of the is­land. We have to in­dus­tri­alise, spread the de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Waller­field area."

Suite, who spoke on con­struc­tion as out­lined in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's maid­en bud­get last week, said a fea­ture of de­vel­op­ment was an ef­fi­cient road net­work and Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er de­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture na­tion­wide. He said Gov­ern­ment al­so should fo­cus on con­struct­ing roads which had been on the agen­da for more than 40 years, such as a high­way along the North Coast and a high­way from San­gre Grande to To­co.

"We have been talk­ing about build­ing a high­way in­to Ch­aguara­mas which will pos­si­bly al­low the de­vel­op­ment of Ch­aguara­mas," he added. He said the na­tion was still wait­ing for the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. "We have been talk­ing about it for more than ten years," he added.

Suite said a na­tion­al build­ing code must be de­vel­oped as well as a new phys­i­cal-de­vel­op­ment plan. Howai, in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, pro­ject­ed that T&T would ex­pe­ri­ence a con­struc­tion boom. How­ev­er, Suite said con­trac­tors were not pre­pared for that. "If con­struc­tion is so im­por­tant, then why does it re­main so dis­or­gan­ised?" Suite asked.

He called for the re­turn of the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil which had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­mote and de­vel­op greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and qual­i­ty aware­ness and con­scious­ness among the pub­lic. That coun­cil, he said, should be ex­pand­ed to over­see pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in all sec­tors.