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Friday, July 4, 2025

Ch­agua­nas West By-Elec­tion

Election Goodies

by

20130727

Two days be­fore the by-elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar emp­tied a bag of good­ies for the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West.She com­mit­ted the Gov­ern­ment to giv­ing for­mer Ca­roni work­ers a par­tial pay­ment of $50 mil­lion. The PM said the for­mer work­ers were "cheat­ed" by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion when they in­vest­ed over $400 mil­lion in a "sweet­en­er" loan.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "Your Gov­ern­ment has al­ready ap­proved the man­age­ment fee pay­ment of $6 mil­lion to off­set all fees and re­turn this mon­ey to the work­ers who paid for such ser­vices."I will now com­mit our Gov­ern­ment to pay­ing $50 mil­lion to the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers who in­vest­ed on the promise of the PNM and were duped in­to putting their mon­ey in that plan."This $50 mil­lion will be paid as par­tial pay­ment to off­set any pay­ments that would have been due to the Ca­roni work­ers by way of in­ter­est re­ceived."

She was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ral­ly at Pierre Road Recre­ation Ground in Fe­lic­i­ty.She said af­ter see­ing the ne­glect and squalor and hear­ing the plight of the com­mu­ni­ty, her Gov­ern­ment re­solved to bring re­lief. She said the elec­tion was an undis­guised bless­ing.

The PM said her Gov­ern­ment pro­posed to re­turn a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the 500 acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al land which was tak­en away by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in 2006 for the de­vel­op­ment of a mil­i­tary base and which re­mained in abeyance for six years.She said Cab­i­net ap­proved $48 mil­lion to fin­ish de­vel­op­ing the Fe­lic­i­ty res­i­den­tial site where the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed to have over 700 lots for dis­tri­b­u­tion lat­er this year.

"This will ben­e­fit many of the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers in Fe­lic­i­ty and the sur­round­ing ar­eas."We will al­so seek fund­ing for the com­ple­tion of the res­i­den­tial site near­by on the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road," she said.She said a ma­jor com­plaint by the peo­ple of Fe­lic­i­ty was health­care.Giv­en the avail­abil­i­ty of land in the area, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she pro­posed to ask the Min­istry of Health to con­struct a health cen­tre in the Fe­lic­i­ty area to ser­vice the west­ern side of greater Ch­agua­nas.

"So you the peo­ple of Pierre Road, Fe­lic­i­ty, and sur­round­ing ar­eas will get your long-await­ed health fa­cil­i­ties."We have iden­ti­fied a par­cel of land on the Ca­roni Con­nec­tor Road for this pur­pose."This is the long-term de­vel­op­ment which my Gov­ern­ment is known for."She said in the last four weeks 20 roads were paved and steps have been tak­en to clean drains, con­struct bridges and agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads.

PM Kam­la say...No to Warn­er join­ing PP

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she lis­tens, con­sid­ers, eval­u­ates and then makes de­ci­sions. And that it was in that con­text she ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.She said, "Maybe I was too for­giv­ing be­fore."Maybe I was too un­der­stand­ing when the ac­cu­sa­tions and charges of al­leged mis­deeds were swirling in­ces­sant­ly.

"When the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er civ­il so­ci­ety groups, all with abun­dant self in­ter­ests, but now omi­nous­ly silent, were call­ing re­peat­ed­ly and vo­cif­er­ous­ly for his head, I stood with him."We all stood with him. I chose not to re­spond to the per­sis­tent al­le­ga­tions and in­nu­en­does."She again de­nied she was con­trolled by a ca­bal as al­leged by Warn­er who is now in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP).

She said Warn­er was a friend whom she held in high re­gard, but she was sad­dened by the path he has cho­sen."There is no doubt he helped re­ju­ve­nate our par­ty at a crit­i­cal junc­ture and played a cen­tral role in our march to gov­ern­ment."But those of us who ac­tu­al­ly lived the his­to­ry know he was but one of many who stood up valiant­ly for our par­ty."She asked the crowd whether the ini­tials of Warn­er's par­ty, ILP, was the ul­ti­mate Freudi­an slip "I Love Pow­er."

She said his res­ig­na­tion as UNC chair­man was "a pure unadul­ter­at­ed act of van­i­ty."She said it came with­out warn­ing and his ex­pla­na­tions were de­fi­cient since he spoke about lack of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and the right to re­call."It was a to­tal uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion."She told sup­port­ers Warn­er slapped his con­stituents in their faces be­cause he did not con­sult with them.

She said Warn­er's val­i­da­tion for re­sign­ing has plunged T&T in­to a na­tion­al dis­trac­tion, but de­spite his de­par­ture, the PP will re­main strong and re­silient.Re­fer­ring to Khadi­jah Ameen, the PM said she was of the firm view the par­ty chose the best can­di­date.And as to whether Warn­er could join the PP, she said, "No. No. No. Ab­solute­ly no."

Elec­tion good­ies

�2 $50 mil­lion for ex-Ca­roni work­ers

�2 Land for rice cul­ti­va­tion

�2 700 lots for dis­tri­b­u­tion in Fe­lic­i­ty and sur­round­ing ar­eas

�2 Health cen­tre

�2 Com­ple­tion of the Munroe Road Pri­ma­ry School


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