Geisha Kow­lessar

Even as he de­clared that T&T is on the brink of the dan­ger zone eco­nom­i­cal­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day sought to as­sure the na­tion that "these are not hope­less times."

He then pro­ceed­ed to list out a se­ries of con­struc­tion projects, main­ly in west Trinidad, due to come on stream short­ly which are aimed at kick start­ing the econ­o­my. They in­clude con­struc­tion of a state-of-the-art po­lice sta­tion in Care­nage, part of a re­vamp­ing of the Ma­rine In­ter­dic­tion Branch to com­bat the nar­co trade. as well as a first class hos­pi­tal in San­gre Grande.

Row­ley said the pro­posed ini­tia­tives would help pull T&T out of its grim eco­nom­ic state, re­sult­ing in much need­ed job op­por­tu­ni­ties. He said it was the con­struc­tion in­dus­try which had been proven world­wide to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth

In his ad­dress at the PNM's 45th con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at St An­tho­ny's Col­lege in west Trinidad yes­ter­day, Row­ley re­called when po­lice of­fi­cers walked out of the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion some years ago. He said since that time, the of­fi­cers had been oc­cu­py­ing rent­ed premis­es at School Street.

"I can tell you that Cab­i­net is about to re­ceive a doc­u­ment where a site has been set­tled up­on by the po­lice and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and very soon work will be­gin on a new po­lice sta­tion in Care­nage," he said.

"It will not be an or­di­nary po­lice sta­tion be­cause rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been made to the min­istry re­spon­si­ble, through the po­lice, that the time has come giv­en what we are fight­ing with re­spect to this in­tractable crime prob­lem for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pand polic­ing to our in­ner shores and we in­tend to bring back the Ma­rine Po­lice Unit."

Row­ley said be­cause the unit will be based at the new Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion there will al­so be the con­struc­tion of a wa­ter front ac­cess.

"That po­lice sta­tion would prob­a­bly be the on­ly one with a ma­rine base on its com­pound," he said.

On the is­sue health­care, he crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for build­ing a Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in Cou­va when there was al­ready a hos­pi­tal some 20 min­utes away at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, in Mt Hope.

"In the bud­get are con­tin­u­a­tion of the aban­doned pro­grammes of Diego Mar­tin and its en­vi­rons," he said, adding that work had re­sumed on the Diego Mar­tin Sports Com­plex which had been aban­doned for five years.

"The con­trac­tor is now back on site and very soon you would see the struc­ture ris­ing in­to the air," the PM said.Work is al­so ex­pect­ed to re­sume on the Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which Row­ley said had been "aban­doned in a sim­i­lar fash­ion."

Con­struc­tion is tak­ing place on the Four Roads Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed soon. The Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre, which serves the en­tire Diego Mar­tin val­ley, is al­so card­ed for com­ple­tion by next year.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so an­nounced plans for a spank­ing new Care­nage Fish­ing Com­plex. He said the fa­cil­i­ty had al­so been ne­glect­ed by the for­mer Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment.

"A con­trac­tor has been put on site to keep the site clean and to re­move a num­ber of va­grants who oc­cu­py the site as their home," he said

"Those per­sons have been re­moved and the con­trac­tor is fi­nal­is­ing his terms with Ude­cot­tand very soon you will see con­struc­tion restart­ing."

Head of­fices for the Diego Mar­tin and Pe­nal Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion are al­so to be built and com­plet­ed by next year as the green light has been giv­en by Cab­i­net to ap­prove ten­ders.

Roqw­ley said while the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment had tak­en steps to award a con­tract to build the Pe­nal Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the process had to be scrapped as it car­ried a $130 mil­lion price tag which je deemed ridicu­lous.

"We are go­ing back now to ten­der for both head­quar­ters. I am ab­solute­ly sure that those build­ings can be built for less that the $130 mil­lion," he said.

In­com­plete hous­ing­pro­jects

Dr Row­ley said T&T's debt in­creased by $40 bil­lion over the last six years, while rev­enues point­ed down­ward. The ex­ter­nal pub­lic debt now stands at $23 bil­lion which must be paid back in US cur­ren­cy, he added

How­ev­er a crit­i­cal area like hous­ing will not be ne­glect­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter as­sured. In­com­plete hous­ing projects, in­clud­ing Fort View, St James, will be com­plet­ed and will ben­e­fit some 200 fam­i­lies.

He said the much sought af­ter Vic­to­ria Keys apart­ments in Diego Mar­tin, for which lands were last week trans­ferred from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), will be sold at mar­ket val­ue.

"I would be very sur­prised if very many of you here will be able to ac­cess those units. This is a very sad sto­ry be­cause that site was ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed by cut­ting to fill, tak­ing it to Movi­eTowne to cre­ate re­claimed land and what was left af­ter was the foot­print on which those three or four build­ings were built," Row­ley said.

He said in 2007 the units were al­most com­plet­ed but when the gov­ern­ment changed the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion spent about $300 mil­lion up­scal­ing the apart­ments.

"The cheap­est unit is $1.6 mil­lion and it ranges from that to $2.5 mil­lion to $3 mil­lion to $4.5 mil­lion. Ob­vi­ous­ly the HDC can­not make those units avail­able to per­sons of mea­gre means, even heav­i­ly sub­sidised," he said.

Row­ley said there was one par­tic­u­lar one bed­room unit worth mil­lions due to its fur­nish­ings. He said mon­ey from the sale of the units will go to the HDC to build low­er in­come homes.Com­ment­ing on the dev­as­ta­tion suf­fered by Haiti from Hur­ri­cane Matthew, Row­ley al­so urged cit­i­zens to head to banks to do­nate.

"It doesn't mat­ter how bad your cir­cum­stances, there is some­body who is worse. We talk about pres­sure and pover­ty here un­til you think about Haiti," he said.