Gail Alexan­der

The Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Ltd (NHSL) is pur­chas­ing a $64 mil­lion he­li­copter to ex­pand op­er­a­tions to the wider Caribbean, Trans­port Min­is­ter Chan­dresh?Shar­ma said Tues­day night. Shar­ma, speak­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives' bud­get de­bate, said NHSL would be op­er­at­ing with the Caribbean.?He said ex­pand­ed ser­vices would al­so mean more traf­fic at the com­pa­ny's field at Cam­den, Cou­va.

Shar­ma, who de­vot­ed the bulk of his time to bash­ing the Op­po­si­tion PNM, said PTSC bus stop malls would soon all have a T&T?flag on the com­pound along with pic­tures of the Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar."This is our coun­try," he said, call­ing for na­tion­al pride.

Shar­ma said the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty (AATT) is in­vest­ing $160 mil­lion in se­cu­ri­ty, CCTV?cam­eras, main­te­nance work and oth­er work on the air­port. He said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived an of­fer of US$50,000 for pur­chase of the MV Su which the PNM had bought and couldn't be used.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived of­fers rang­ing from US$50,000 and TT$400,000 for wa­ter taxis which were not be­ing used. He said the Gov­ern­ment was pay­ing $50 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in sub­si­dies for wa­ter taxis which car­ried 1,500 pas­sen­gers dai­ly when a full load is 4,000 peo­ple.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley, speak­ing to re­porters, said yes­ter­day the Prime Min­is­ter al­ready used three state he­li­copters as "taxis." "If they're buy­ing more, it's be­cause she needs to do more trav­el­ling...The bud­get has been in­creased so she need­ed some more trav­el­ling," he said.

Row­ley said the MV?Su pur­chase was done in the PNM by for­mer par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary Roger Joseph who he said was a "cross the floor can­di­date" to the UNC and is now a se­nior Nid­co of­fi­cer with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship?Gov­ern­ment.