In prepa­ra­tion for lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion due next Ju­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last night called on MPs and coun­cil­lors of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to be­gin to walk through the ar­eas they rep­re­sent­ed in what she de­scribed as "a strat­e­gy de­signed to lis­ten and serve."

In her ad­dress at the par­ty's Mon­day night fo­rum in Tul­sa Trace, Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged UNC sup­port­ers to stand ready to de­fend their lead­ers, the par­ty and the poli­cies of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. She said: "Your par­ty and Gov­ern­ment will al­ways be un­der at­tack. "You must rise to the chal­lenge and fear­less­ly go for­ward with con­fi­dence in your Gov­ern­ment and its abil­i­ty to cre­ate a pros­per­ous no­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so urged UNC sup­port­ers: "Do not suc­cumb to the pro­pa­gan­da which will in­crease over the next few months." She said she was not a pup­pet in the hands of any­one. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so gave her MPs three weeks to pre­pare a mid-term re­port of their achieve­ments over the last 30 months and re­port to their con­stituents. She called on them to hold at least two meet­ing in their con­stituen­cies for that pur­pose.

In ad­di­tion, Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters must com­pile re­ports on the achieve­ments of their min­istries for 2012 and make that in­for­ma­tion avail­able to the pub­lic. On the is­sue of the Point Fortin High­way, Per­sad Bisses­sar once again main­tained her Gov­ern­ment was not afraid to make avail­able the stud­ies, ap­proval doc­u­ments and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion that any group want­ed on the project.

"If there is any crit­i­cism to be made of the Gov­ern­ment on this mat­ter it will be that we have not giv­en as much in­for­ma­tion as we should have giv­en," she said. The Prime Min­is­ter in­sist­ed that the con­tro­ver­sial Debe to Mon De­sir route would have a min­i­mal im­pact on the Orop­uche La­goon.

She said al­ter­na­tive routes were eval­u­at­ed and re­ject­ed be­cause cost ben­e­fits and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues were sat­is­fied by the cur­rent route and there was a ro­bust process for re­view­ing the de­signs of the con­trac­tors and their con­sul­tants. Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mend­ed the JCC?and the Gov­ern­ment team for their suc­cess­ful meet­ing on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.

She called on ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, who has been on a hunger strike for the past 20 days, to re­con­sid­er his po­si­tion in light of the meet­ing be­tween the JCC and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the Min­istry of En­er­gy re­cent­ly com­plet­ed the most suc­cess­ful deep­wa­ter bid round in 14 years. These bid rounds, she said, were held for com­pa­nies to elect to ex­plore for oil and gas.

She said the Min­istry of En­er­gy com­plet­ed its eval­u­a­tion of those bids which were re­ceived in Sep­tem­ber and they were ap­proved by Cab­i­net last week Thurs­day. She said the re­sults of that deep­wa­ter bid round were:

• Deep­wa­ter Block 5, award­ed to BHP Bil­li­ton

• Deep­wa­ter Block 6, award­ed to BHP Bil­li­ton

• Deep­wa­ter Block 28, award­ed to BHP Bil­li­ton

• Deep­wa­ter Block 29, award­ed to BHP Bil­li­ton

BHP Bil­li­ton is an Aus­tralian com­pa­ny with rev­enues of US$72 bil­lion in 2012. It is one of the world's largest com­pa­nies. It has been in T&T for over 15 years. She said that meant BHP Bil­li­ton would ex­pand in T&T with more jobs for our young peo­ple. She said the to­tal in­vest­ment as­so­ci­at­ed with those suc­cess­ful bids was at least US$580 mil­lion and at most US$1024 mil­lion or one bil­lion US dol­lars.

That was at least TT$ 3.7 bil­lion or at most TT$ 6.4 bil­lion in in­vest­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cab­i­net al­so agreed to the award of li­cences to state-owned Petrotrin in re­spect of Trin­mar and the North Ma­rine acreages.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said Cab­i­net agreed to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on En­er­gy and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy for the es­tab­lish­ment of a US$850 mil­lion methanol to petro­chem­i­cals project by Mit­sub­ushi of Japan. That trans­lat­ed in­to an in­vest­ment of TT$ 5.4 bil­lion, she added.

She said: "What we have an­nounced here tonight is a to­tal al­most US$3 bil­lion in in­vest­ment be­tween BHP Bil­li­ton, Mit­sub­ushi and Petrotrin. That is some TT$19 bil­lion and this is just for three com­pa­nies."