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Thursday, July 24, 2025

$85m on transport plan for East-West Corridor

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20161005

An es­ti­mat­ed $85 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed in 2017 bud­get fund­ing for a Port-of-Spain/East-West Cor­ri­dor trans­porta­tion project.The fig­ure is list­ed un­der the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment (ID) Fund in the Es­ti­mates of De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme 2017, one of the bud­get doc­u­ments.

An ini­tial 2016 es­ti­mate for this item was $155 mil­lion. This was re­vised down­ward to $13 mil­lion in 2016. The fig­ure was, how­ev­er, in­creased for 2017.

Works of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day it was not a "rapid rail" project but giv­en traf­fic grid­lock is­sues and com­muters' woes, some ease with trans­port was nec­es­sary. They said de­tails would be giv­en in the 2017 Bud­get de­bate which be­gins this af­ter­noon in Par­lia­ment.

Al­so list­ed is fund­ing for a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for a pro­posed To­co fer­ry port. The port was among the rul­ing PNM gen­er­al elec­tion man­i­festo promis­es.

Ear­li­er this year Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans for con­struc­tion of the Va­len­cia High­way which is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand ac­cess to east­ern ar­eas in prepa­ra­tion for the port. Con­struc­tion of the high­way to To­co Road re­ceived a $15 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the ID Fund.

Con­tin­ued fund­ing for sev­er­al prison de­vel­op­ment projects ex­tend to con­struc­tion of a new Re­mand Prison at Gold­en Grove and con­struc­tion of video con­fer­enc­ing fa­cil­i­ties at the Re­mand Yard Prison at the same venue. The lat­ter is part of the thrust to­wards in-house court ses­sions pro­ject­ed by au­thor­i­ties.

A pedes­tri­an en­trance will al­so be con­struct­ed at the Port-of-Spain prison.Al­so list­ed is $20 mil­lion for restora­tion of Pres­i­dent's House.A new project, con­struc­tion of a To­ba­go res­i­dence for the Prime Min­is­ter, was al­lo­cat­ed $500,000 start-up fund­ing.

Un­der the So­cial De­vel­op­ment/Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­istry, $4 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed for the Street Dwellers Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Rein­te­gra­tion Project. This is an in­crease from the ini­tial 2016 es­ti­mate of $1.5 mil­lion which was re­vised down­ward to $612,000 in 2016.

How­ev­er, so­cial work­er/busi­ness­man An­tho­ny Sal­loum ex­pressed con­cern the $4 mil­lion would go to­wards fur­ther con­cretis­ing the River­side Plaza as a cen­tre for the home­less.

"I'm not sure where the $4 mil­lion is go­ing but hope­ful­ly it will go to­wards a prop­er Home­less As­sis­tance Cen­tre once and for all. The on­ly thing close to it is River­side Plaza which is an abom­i­na­tion since there are 125 jammed in what is es­sen­tial­ly a car park.

"That is in­ad­e­quate to house such peo­ple. My con­cern is each year fund­ing is sunk in­to that car park even though it isn't ap­pro­pri­ate for the home­less. Hu­man rights come in­to play with the home­less and this car park has been con­demned sev­er­al times," he said.


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