Trinidad and To­ba­go has lost more than TT$30 bil­lion over the past five years be­cause of dis­sat­is­fac­tion and per­ceived de­lays in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s process­es for ma­jor projects. It was con­firmed via a press re­lease from the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, which said the fig­ure was dis­closed as a new Board of Di­rec­tors was ap­point­ed to the EMA.

Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh pre­sent­ed in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to the mem­bers on Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the Min­is­ter told the board that Trinidad and To­ba­go had lost more than TT$30 bil­lion over the past five years and TT$1 bil­lion in the last year be­cause of dis­sat­is­fac­tion and per­ceived de­lays in EMA process­es for ma­jor projects. The re­lease said the board was tasked with re­view­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s pro­ce­dures, fee struc­tures, and reg­u­la­tions while main­tain­ing high en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards.

The board, ap­point­ed for two years un­der sec­tion 6 of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act, in­cludes chair Doolar Ram­lal, Neeala Mon­groo, Kadeem Williams, Dr Re­bec­ca Gookool-Bosland, Naresh Ra­goo­nanan, No­va John­son, Dr Steve Ra­j­pat­ty, Ke­ston Daniel, Avinash Pha­goo and Key­dell Kerr of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

The re­lease said the board will over­see pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, com­pli­ance mon­i­tor­ing, pol­lu­tion con­trol, con­ser­va­tion, and pub­lic en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion.