Derek Achong

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions of her Gov­ern­ment's ne­glect and dis­crim­i­na­tion to­wards Op­po­si­tion con­stituen­cies.Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment at the launch of the $82 mil­lion Diego Mar­tin High­way ex­pan­sion project at play­park, Vic­to­ria Gar­dens, Diego Mar­tin, yes­ter­day.

"I re­fer to claims by some who say de­vel­op­ment works on­ly take place in South and Cen­tral. I con­sid­er state­ments like those not on­ly un­true but they al­so have the in­ten­tion of cre­at­ing false im­pres­sions of dis­crim­i­na­tion and re­source man­age­ment," she said.As she sought to prove her claim, Per­sad-Bisses­sar itemised sev­er­al on­go­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment projects in PNM con­sis­ten­cies along the East/West Cor­ri­dor, in­clud­ing the Va­len­cia By­pass Road and the widen­ing of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Trinci­ty.

She al­so not­ed her gov­ern­ment had al­ready com­menced ma­jor de­vel­op­ment works in Ch­aguara­mas and had re­cent­ly signed a con­tract for a $20 mil­lion mod­ern fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Care­nage, the con­stituen­cy of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. "So not on­ly we have en­sured de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes are more fair­ly dis­trib­uted, which is a big de­par­ture, but these pro­grammes are car­ried out with greater pre­ci­sion, dis­ci­pline and recog­ni­tion of the val­ue of your tax dol­lars."

She al­so paid spe­cial at­ten­tion to the project be­ing launched yes­ter­day which she said was com­plet­ed on time and with­in bud­get.The project adds two north-bound lanes to the Diego Mar­tin High­way and al­lows two-way traf­fic on the Diego Mar­tin Main Road, be­tween Vic­to­ria Gar­dens and Ac­ton Court.Be­sides eas­ing grid­lock traf­fic ex­pe­ri­enced by res­i­dents of Diego Mar­tin dur­ing peak hours, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the project would al­so pro­vide re­lief to busi­ness­es, whose op­er­a­tions were al­so ham­pered.

Ben­e­fits of elec­tion law

As she sought to pro­mote con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) Bill 2014, which was passed in the Low­er House fol­low­ing a marathon sit­ting of Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the changes to the elec­toral process would give cit­i­zens the pow­er to de­cide on ma­jor de­vel­op­ment projects in their com­mu­ni­ties.

"Through the pow­er that the Con­sti­tu­tion now gives you, you can dic­tate the pace, the lev­el and the qual­i­ty of de­vel­op­ment in our own com­mu­ni­ties. You have the pow­er to de­mand even more ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and open gov­er­nance," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter again re­ject­ed crit­i­cism of the much ma­ligned runoff pro­vi­sion in the leg­is­la­tion as she claimed the pro­pos­al was mis­un­der­stood.

She not­ed that the fur­ther de­bate of the bill, which would be laid in the Sen­ate next Tues­day, would be de­layed to Au­gust 26 to al­low for ad­di­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion and analy­sis.She said the bills were just one as­pect of the Gov­ern­ment's plans for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, which in­clud­ed the fur­ther de­bate of pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and the refer­al of the is­sue of elec­tion cam­paign fi­nanc­ing to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment.