Richard Lord

The Gov­ern­ment se­cured pas­sage of four bills which each re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­fore the lunch break yes­ter­day.Those bills re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, which the Gov­ern­ment got, al­though the Op­po­si­tion PNM and ILP vot­ed against and ab­stained re­spec­tive­ly on the HCU leg­is­la­tion.In wind­ing up de­bate on that mea­sure, Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said the leg­is­la­tion was need­ed to en­sure de­pos­i­tors in the now dis­band­ed Hin­du Cred­it Union would be able to re­ceive $75,000 in cash and those with shares over that fig­ure will al­so be paid via bonds.

He said the ex­er­cise was ex­pect­ed to cost the State $400 mil­lion and the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to meet­ing the pay­ments to the for­mer share­hold­ers. The leg­is­la­tion was amend­ed to en­sure that the Pres­i­dent and oth­er of­fi­cers of the HCU and its sub­sidiary com­pa­nies did not ben­e­fit from the pay­ment.Howai told leg­is­la­tors dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road that the cred­it union's col­lapse was caused by a "lapse in the reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem."Ear­li­er in the sit­ting, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters is­sued a di­rect ap­peal to Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald for her as­sis­tance in the fight against crime in the Laven­tille area.

He was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on the or­der pa­per from Mc­Don­ald, who want­ed to know the sta­tus of a 2010 project to con­struct the Pic­ton Dance The­atre.Pe­ters said on­ly about ten per cent of the project was com­plete, as work had to stop be­cause of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the area.He said his min­istry was now hold­ing in­con­clu­sive dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for mil­i­tary and po­lice of­fi­cers to se­cure the area for work to re­sume. He said as was done in Beetham, the army/po­lice team will have to es­tab­lish a fa­cil­i­ty there "to stave off the un­to­ward be­hav­iour of some el­e­ments in those com­mu­ni­ties for us to con­tin­ue the work that needs to be done on these cen­tres."Pe­ters said it was "a cry­ing shame that this has to be done in our coun­try," and if there had not been a crime prob­lem, work on the project would have been in progress.

He said dis­cus­sions to se­cure the mil­i­tary and po­lice of­fi­cials for the project would be­gin in the com­ing weeks, and if the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were put in place and funds avail­able, the project should recom­mence in fis­cal 2015–which be­gins in Oc­to­ber this year.In re­sponse to a sup­ple­men­tal ques­tion from Mc Don­ald, he said the dis­cus­sions to se­cure the re­quired se­cu­ri­ty for the area "could take four years, be­cause the el­e­ments there are so dan­ger­ous."He then asked Mc­Don­ald "to go to her con­stituen­cy, speak to some of these el­e­ments and see if we can get them to curb their be­hav­iour so their com­mu­ni­ty can see progress."Mc­Don­ald shot back, "Who is in charge of run­ning this coun­try?"

He re­spond­ed that was a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion and that he would not an­swer it.Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some chal­lenges with the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a walkover on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way at Sea Lots as sev­er­al util­i­ties, in­clud­ing TSTT, WASA, NGC and Flow, have in­fra­struc­ture which was dif­fi­cult to re­move.Nev­er­the­less, he said the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to con­struct­ing the over­pass­es at that site and at the Fer­ry Ter­mi­nal, Wright­son Road and Movie Towne.

Bills Passed

The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice) Bill.

The Land Ten­ants (Se­cu­ri­ty of Tenure) (Amend­ment) Bill

The Pur­chase of Cer­tain Rights (HCU) Bill.

The Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill