Geisha Kow­lessar

New­ly sworn in Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, who of­fi­cial­ly took up du­ty yes­ter­day, says he has no in­ten­tion of tak­ing over the jobs of the tech­nocrats. In­stead, he will be en­sur­ing that there is ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and no wastage of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

"I am guid­ed by the tech­nocrats. The Gov­ern­ment has its pol­i­cy in place with re­gards to in­fra­struc­ture and new de­vel­op­ments and new projects and com­plet­ing the ex­ist­ing projects," Sinanan said yes­ter­day.

Sinanan, who met with sev­er­al of­fi­cials at the min­istry's head of­fice at Rich­mond Street, Port-of Spain, said he was look­ing for­ward to his new port­fo­lio, but added that for­mer min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, now the new Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, had paved the way for him, mak­ing his job "much eas­i­er."

"The first year sit­ting in this min­istry would have been a very big chal­lenge for Min­is­ter Hinds...try­ing to put the struc­tures back in line to get prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty back in line.

"I think I'm just go­ing to take the man­tle from him and press on with what is re­quired," Sinanan said.

Say­ing the min­istry could not be run from "just in­side the of­fice," Sinanan said he in­tend­ed to go out on the field and talk to mem­bers of the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly, re­gard­ing their needs.

"Ac­tu­al­ly, I want to have a hands-on ap­proach as to what is go­ing on but I want to re­it­er­ate that I am not go­ing to take over any job that is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the tech­nocrats," he said.

"My job is to make sure that the Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy is ad­hered to in the short­est and quick­est pos­si­ble time. My job is al­so to make sure we com­plete the old projects, start the new projects, and every­thing must be prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for where cit­i­zens would get val­ue for mon­ey."

Hinds, who was al­so on hand, of­fi­cial­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed Sinanan. Hinds ad­mit­ted he had faced some chal­lenges when he took the min­istry last year, in­clud­ing that of hu­man re­sources, lo­gis­tics and fi­nances, which he de­scribed as the "most sig­nif­i­cant of them all."

"I man­aged this very gi­ant min­istry and now I go to the new chal­lenges in Pub­lic Util­i­ties and I will ap­proach it with the same blue­print, but I an­tic­i­pate no un­usu­al chal­lenges," Hinds said.

On whether the pro­posed con­tro­ver­sial Curepe over­pass project would be­gin, Sinanan said he will meet with mem­bers of the High­ways Di­vi­sion to de­ter­mine the best way for­ward.

The pro­posed project had been sin­gled out by for­mer min­is­ter in the min­istry of works, Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine, who had sent an e-mail to then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2014, al­leg­ing that there had been in­ter­fer­ence by for­mer works min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan in the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) board's busi­ness.

It was al­leged Ram­bachan was ped­dling his in­flu­ence to have the first-ranked bid­der, Vin­ci Con­struc­tion, struck off in favour of Lutch­meesingh's Trans­port Con­trac­tors Ltd. But Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since said in Par­lia­ment that she had en­quired and found noth­ing awry in the bid­ding process.