Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley came bear­ing gifts for burgess­es in the To­co/San­gre re­gion, promis­ing to be­gin de­vel­op­men­tal works that will link them to To­ba­go and cre­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing apace to de­vel­op the high­ways from Va­len­cia to To­co and Cu­mu­to to Man­zanil­la, as well as con­struct a fer­ry port in To­co, which would gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic growth, jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who live in near­by com­mu­ni­ties.

He of­fered many op­por­tu­ni­ties with the in­fra­struc­tur­al works the Gov­ern­ment was rolling out while ad­dress­ing par­ty sup­port­ers at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in San­gre Grande on Thurs­day.

In a bid to get the Va­len­cia/To­co high­way off the ground, Row­ley said, "A con­sul­tant firm which is on the job and in the process of con­clud­ing the road align­ment" had al­ready been se­lect­ed.

There­after, sur­vey­ing will be­gin, fol­lowed by a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion host­ed by Nid­co.

"As we get our clear­ance to pro­ceed we then will go us­ing an IDB fund­ing arrange­ment."

Row­ley as­sured no one con­trac­tor will build this high­way.

Soon, Row­ley said, a con­tract will al­so award­ed for the con­struc­tion of the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la High­way.

The two pro­posed road net­works, Row­ley promised would in­crease the val­ue of burgess­es' lands by 50 per cent.

He promised to tie Trinidad to To­ba­go with the es­tab­lish­ment of the fer­ry, which he stat­ed would open up new doors for burgess­es.

He said he saw no rea­son why we can't tap in­to pro­duc­ing a larg­er quan­ti­ty of co­coa.

Row­ley said if peo­ple ven­tured in­to co­coa farm­ing us­ing their lands, the Gov­ern­ment can use funds from Cepep and URP mon­ey to help them.

"Once you are pre­pared to pro­vide the hus­bandry then you would be com­mit­ting your­self to ex­pand­ing our econ­o­my in ar­eas that would al­low us to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my."

The PM al­so promised to give the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion full au­ton­o­my, au­thor­i­ty and more re­sources in run­ning its af­fairs.

?