Charles Kong Soo

Work has stopped on the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti-sports com­plex at the Or­ange Grove Sa­van­nah, Tacarigua, af­ter a sec­ond stop or­der was is­sued by the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC).TPRC vice-chair­man Es­mond Forde con­firmed that yes­ter­day.Forde said: "Ear­li­er this month a sec­ond stop or­der came from the Build­ing and In­spec­tions De­part­ment of the cor­po­ra­tion to cease work on the project.

"Keep in mind that we have al­so writ­ten the agency that is rep­re­sent­ing the Min­istry of Sport, and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) with re­gard to en­sur­ing that the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tions are sub­mit­ted to the cor­po­ra­tion for ap­proval."This in­cludes a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), Min­istry of Drainage cer­tifi­cate and WASA, T&TEC and fire de­part­ment ap­provals."

Tacarigua res­i­dents and mem­bers of the Save Our Green Space Com­mit­tee have called for the project to be moved, say­ing it will de­ny the hun­dreds of peo­ple who use the cur­rent fa­cil­i­ties at the ground a green space.Since Ju­ly they have staged a se­ries of protests against the planned de­vel­op­ment on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route near the Ed­die Hart Grounds, in front the TPRC and in front of Sportt's head­quar­ters, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

The body's act­ing sec­re­tary, Ver­non de Leon, said yes­ter­day he was hop­ing the sec­ond stop or­der would hold.He added: "We are op­ti­mistic that there has at last been a re­sponse to the law and the cor­po­ra­tion's au­thor­i­ty be­cause for the first time this morn­ing we saw that there was ab­solute­ly no ac­tiv­i­ty there."The group had claimed the de­vel­op­ers had failed to stop ac­tiv­i­ty at the site af­ter the first stop or­der was is­sued.

He said the res­i­dents want­ed the project moved to the state lands south of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way so as to pre­serve the sa­van­nah, the res­i­dents' way of life and the aquifer be­neath it.