Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment's bid to set­tle with Debe and Mon De­sir com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by the Point Fortin High­way had in­clud­ed not on­ly of­fer of land to build new com­mu­ni­ties but al­so farm­ing acreage, "dis­tur­bance pay­ments" and coun­selling, ac­cord­ing to a Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) re­port on the high­way is­sue.

The com­pa­ny's pre­lim­i­nary re­port al­so stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment had found a way to re­duce the width of the Point Fortin High­way in pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas and re­duce the num­ber and acreage of prop­er­ties to be ac­quired.

In the wake of the con­tin­u­ing hunger strike by High­way Re-route Move­ment leader Wayne Kublals­ingh, now be­ing re­port­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the Gov­ern­ment re­leased doc­u­ments con­cern­ing the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tions about which the move­ment is protest­ing.

Sev­er­al groups had called for the re­lease of a tech­ni­cal study and COP?leader Prakash Ra­mad­har last week had asked Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George to re­lease doc­u­ments on meet­ings of the Gov­ern­ment's team with the move­ment on the is­sue. On Thurs­day, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed said the doc­u­ments would be made avail­able to the me­dia.

The June 2012 re­port done by Nid­co, re­leased yes­ter­day, stat­ed the doc­u­ment was meant to ad­dress the move­ment's con­cerns. It out­lined how Brazil­ian OAS Ltd con­trac­tors won the bid over Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd, Con­stru­to­ra OAS Ltd and GLF Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion. Project com­ple­tion date is 2015.

The re­port stat­ed that on Feb­ru­ary 13, the move­ment re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter to re­quest that the pro­posed Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the high­way be dis­con­tin­ued and to pro­pose an al­ter­na­tive route. It not­ed all of the move­ment's con­cerns.

Sub­se­quent to dis­cus­sions be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and sev­er­al mem­bers of the Cab­i­net with the move­ment, the re­port stat­ed the Works Min­istry met on April 18 with Nid­co and the move­ment to dis­cuss the group's con­cerns and de­ter­mine the way for­ward. The move­ment re­it­er­at­ed its con­cerns of flood­ing and salt­wa­ter in­tru­sion, dis­rup­tion of com­mu­ni­ties, cost of the seg­ment and that mem­bers di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the high­way did not wish to move.

The move­ment al­so stat­ed the lands pro­posed for re­lo­ca­tion at Pe­tit Morne were not ac­cept­able to its mem­bers. The re­port not­ed that Nid­co was about to be­gin ad­di­tion­al stud­ies which would ad­dress the con­cerns of the stake­hold­ers and the wider com­mu­ni­ty in greater de­tail.

"Ad­di­tion­al stud­ies will in­volve re­view­ing the ex­ist­ing road net­work in the sub­ject area and de­ter­min­ing a log­i­cal net­work that could ac­com­mo­date the traf­fic en­ter­ing and by­pass­ing the Debe/Pe­nal/Siparia to Mon De­sir seg­ment, based on ex­ist­ing and fu­ture traf­fic vol­umes and per­ti­nent con­straints," the re­port stat­ed.

Doc­u­ments stat­ed that im­pact on com­mu­ni­ties could not be avoid­ed, on­ly mit­i­gat­ed. It added that the Gov­ern­ment sought to min­imise im­pacts on com­mu­ni­ties by re­lo­cat­ing per­sons re­sid­ing in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by the high­way be­tween Debe, Pe­nal and San Fran­cique to a new de­vel­op­ment at Pe­tit Morne.

It stat­ed: "Per­sons would be giv­en land at Pe­tit Morne to build a new com­mu­ni­ty, in­clu­sive of land for schools, ear­ly child­hood de­vel­op­ment cen­tres, re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties (tem­ple, mosque), sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and recre­ation­al green ar­eas. Gov­ern­ment has al­so agreed to set aside land for farm­ers who will be af­fect­ed (two- acre plots)." Doc­u­ments stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy was al­so to ac­quire lands for the high­way by pri­vate treaty.

The re­port stat­ed that dis­tur­bance pay­ments may in­clude but were not lim­it­ed to:

(a) Cost of seek­ing and find­ing a new lo­ca­tion in which to con­tin­ue what­ev­er the claimant was dis­turbed in do­ing

(b) the le­gal and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al costs that would be in­curred in se­cur­ing the new lo­ca­tion

(c) any con­struc­tion costs that might be nec­es­sary in adapt­ing the al­ter­nate lo­ca­tion to meet any spe­cial needs

(d) any costs that might be in­curred in adapt­ing or re­plac­ing such items of soft fur­nish­ings that may need to be al­tered or re­placed

(e) any loss of busi­ness prof­its tem­porar­i­ly or per­ma­nent­ly as a re­sult of the dis­lo­ca­tion

On the move­ment's flood­ing con­cerns, the re­port not­ed flood­ing of the area oc­curred on a peren­ni­al ba­sis, and "flood­ing will con­tin­ue to be part of life for the re­gion (with or with­out the high­way) if ac­tion is not tak­en to ad­dress the prob­lem." It was not­ed flood­ing was due to in­ad­e­quate car­ry­ing ca­pac­i­ties of the drains and in­creased sur­face run-off.

It not­ed Nid­co was man­dat­ed to un­der­take de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing stud­ies of the South Oropouche Riv­er Basin with de­tailed de­signs of the pro­posed so­lu­tions.

The re­port stat­ed that the Works Min­istry and Nid­co "are mak­ing every ef­fort to mit­i­gate the flood­ing con­cerns of the re­gion by ad­dress­ing the is­sue on two fronts, by study­ing and im­ple­ment­ing a plan for mit­i­gat­ing flood­ing in the en­tire South Oropouche Riv­er Basin and by en­sur­ing that in­creased runoff due to the high­way struc­ture is ad­dressed."

The re­port al­so stat­ed Nid­co had tak­en all nec­es­sary steps to as­sist the com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed and to con­sult and col­lab­o­rate with the res­i­dents and per­sons to be served by the high­way.

"Nid­co has made arrange­ments to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive im­pacts ex­pect­ed from the process of land ac­qui­si­tion and con­struc­tion and con­tin­ues to car­ry out ad­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal stud­ies, in­clud­ing stud­ies on traf­fic man­age­ment, road ma­te­ri­als and wa­ter man­age­ment to re­duce the neg­a­tive im­pacts and in­creas­ing the ben­e­fits which the high­way is ex­pect­ed to bring," it stat­ed.

Move­ment's al­ter­na­tives raised con­cerns–re­port

The High­way Re-route Move­ment's pro­pos­als that the Point Fortin High­way be stopped at Debe rais­es "se­ri­ous con­cerns" ac­cord­ing to one of the Gov­ern­ment's tech­ni­cal re­ports. It ex­am­ined the move­ment's pro­pos­al for traf­fic to be rerout­ed from Debe to Mos­qui­to Creek and for up­grade of lo­cal roads in the area. It stat­ed that un­der the move­ment's pro­pos­als:

�2 Res­i­dents of the re­gion will not re­ceive the ben­e­fits of a mod­ern high­way fa­cil­i­ty that they de­serve (high­light­ed above)

�2 There will be no re­duc­tion in road-user costs in the form of sav­ings in ve­hi­cle op­er­at­ing costs and trav­el time costs for the peo­ple.

�2 The high­way route has pro­vi­sions for a util­i­ty cor­ri­dor to ac­com­mo­date WASA, T&TEC and oth­er ser­vice providers to ac­com­mo­date fu­ture ex­pan­sion and main­te­nance of their in­fra­struc­ture that will be re­quired to ser­vice the com­mu­ni­ties ef­fec­tive­ly well in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry. This ben­e­fit will be lost as the lo­cal road net­work can­not fa­cil­i­tate the an­tic­i­pat­ed im­prove­ments.

�2 Traf­fic con­ges­tion will con­tin­ue in Debe, Pe­nal and Siparia and wors­en over time. A re­view of the lo­cal road net­work shows that even if the Gov­ern­ment im­proves the ex­ist­ing road net­work (which is on­go­ing), con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the main pop­u­la­tion cen­tres, such as Debe, Pe­nal, Siparia, and Fyz­abad, will still have traf­fic con­ges­tion and safe­ty prob­lems to­day, which will wors­en con­sid­er­ably when one ac­counts for the pro­ject­ed traf­fic vol­ume ex­pect­ed in 20 years.

�2 Traf­fic con­ges­tion al­so will be ex­ac­er­bat­ed with the im­mi­nent con­struc­tion of the South UWI Cam­pus at Debe, the de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­tri­al parks through eTeck, and the new hos­pi­tal to be built in Pe­nal. These fa­cil­i­ties will gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al traf­fic with the at­ten­dant prob­lems and in­con­ve­niences.