Kevon Felmine

High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh yes­ter­day warned the Gov­ern­ment against ig­nor­ing the voice of the peo­ple.At a press con­fer­ence held at the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union San Fer­nan­do head­quar­ters, Kublals­ingh crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment and high­way con­trac­tors Con­stru­to­ra OAS over Christ­mas Day floods in Debe and La Ro­maine.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion, Kublals­ingh showed pic­tures and videos of flood­ing along the SS Erin Road, the M1 Ring Road, Dum­fries Road and the OAS camp­site near the Debe In­ter­change, all of which are in­clud­ed in the high­way plan.

He said last week's floods were a pre­lude to dis­as­ters to come if the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues with its con­struc­tion of the dis­put­ed Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way. He said the flood oc­curred be­cause of the con­trac­tor's ig­no­rance of the Oropouche La­goon that stretch­es from Debe to Mon De­sir."They don't know what they are do­ing.

"OAS does not have a clue about the about the hy­drol­o­gy of the Oropouche La­goon oth­er­wise their own work site would not have been flood­ed. How come when they have so much tech­nol­o­gy and such good prac­tices and yet they don't have a clue of what they are do­ing? If they ven­ture be­tween Debe and Mon De­sir it will cre­ate ex­ces­sive flood­ing," Kublals­ingh said.Kublals­ingh said this was the lat­est in a se­ries of in­jus­tices the Gov­ern­ment had dealt cit­i­zens which could have crim­i­nal im­pli­ca­tions.

"If you put ac­cu­mu­la­tive­ly all of the atroc­i­ties this Gov­ern­ment has con­duct­ed against our peo­ple, we be­lieve this con­sti­tutes a crim­i­nal ac­tion against us. This Par­lia­ment will fail, it will fall apart and it will stop some time in 2014 per­haps. I want to re­mind the min­is­ters that some­times you have tri­bunals and court mat­ters where you are hauled be­fore the courts to an­swer atroc­i­ties and in­stances of malfea­sance.

"We are peace­ful peo­ple, we do not want that to hap­pen. We do not want them to live af­ter they leave Gov­ern­ment, watch­ing be­hind their shoul­ders but we are warn­ing–deal just­ly with us please and lis­ten to the ad­vice of the ex­perts. Lis­ten to the ad­vice of the sci­en­tists and lis­ten to the ad­vice of the Arm­strong Re­port. We can­not stress it any fur­ther," he said.Kublals­ingh said al­though civ­il and crim­i­nal court mat­ters con­tin­ue next month, the HRM will not back down from its ef­forts to stop work on Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that he was wor­ried that by the time the court mat­ter was fin­ished, the Gov­ern­ment would have com­plet­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work in the area.