Kali­fa Clyne

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh plans to protest out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Port-of-Spain, un­til the next gen­er­al elec­tion.He restart­ed his peace­ful protest out­side the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fice yes­ter­day against the con­struc­tion of the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin.The en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist, who spoke to the T&T Guardian while be­ing shad­ed by a tree on Gray Street, St Clair, said he was pre­pared to wait out­side of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter un­til the elec­tion was called and even be­yond that if Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ued to ig­nore the Arm­strong re­port.

It was com­piled by for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor James Arm­strong and a group of 19 tech­ni­cal ex­perts on the Mon De­sir sec­tion of the high­way fol­low­ing the in­ter­ven­tion of sev­er­al groups, in­clud­ing the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), af­ter a hunger strike by Kublals­ingh in De­cem­ber 2012.It rec­om­mend­ed three months lat­er that no fur­ther work be un­der­tak­en on the sec­tion of the high­way un­til all of the con­di­tions con­tained in the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance have been ful­filled, in­clud­ing the need for all the plans spec­i­fied in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment sub­mit­ted to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, and for ap­provals to be ob­tained from the rel­e­vant agen­cies."We are here to re­mind the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter she must do the ho­n­ourable thing and abide by the Arm­strong re­port."We plan to be out here un­til the elec­tions and even if the next Gov­ern­ment comes in and con­tin­ues to ig­nore the re­port, we will re­main here," Kublals­ingh added.

Kublals­ingh went on a 21-day hunger strike out­side of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in De­cem­ber 2012 but end­ed af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter ap­point­ed Arm­strong to re­view the project.He has led protests at the Mon De­sir site af­ter com­plaints that con­struc­tion ve­hi­cles were mov­ing in on pri­vate lands in the area.He was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al times for the ob­struc­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers in the ex­er­cise of their du­ties."She (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) needs to be more re­spon­si­ble, oth­er­wise why did we have this hunger strike? Why was this re­port com­mis­sioned? Why did they par­tic­i­pate in the process," said Kublals­ingh.He ex­pressed con­fu­sion as to why the re­port was be­ing ig­nored by Gov­ern­ment, de­spite cost­ing it close to $1 mil­lion."What does the Prime Min­is­ter want to do? Con­demn it to a bin? Put it on a shelf?" he asked.To­day, Jus­tice James Aboud will de­liv­er a key rul­ing in a law­suit filed by the High­way Re-route Move­ment seek­ing to stop the project at Debe."If it is grant­ed, it has all the pow­ers of an in­junc­tion and the con­trac­tor will cer­tain­ly have to stop work, pend­ing the mat­ter in court," Kablals­ingh added.