Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says Gov­ern­ment plans to fund its Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print through “gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment” and “pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships”.

She al­so re­vealed that soon she will leave the coun­try to seek for­eign in­vest­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, af­ter an am­bi­tious re­de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­tur­al ten-year plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go was un­veiled yes­ter­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, the min­is­ter was asked where the mon­ey to fund these mas­sive projects is com­ing from.

Min­is­ter John ex­plained, “If you no­tice, that room had a mix of peo­ple. It had bankers, it had the cap­tains of in­dus­try, and so on. And we were live-stream­ing all across the globe. So, we are look­ing at gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship. If you no­tice, and you hear the buzz about, peo­ple said they have nev­er seen a roll-out like this.”

John added, “This is not a joke. It’s a se­ri­ous mat­ter. So, you have to raise your stan­dard. And what we tried to do was to en­sure that we were seam­less in terms of, you didn’t know if this pre­sen­ta­tion was tak­ing place in New York, in Dubai, in Sin­ga­pore. Be­cause of the qual­i­ty of the pre­sen­ta­tion. That was done by me and a few oth­er peo­ple, sit­ting in this coun­try. So, we have the po­ten­tial, we have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty, we have the dri­ve. I work very hard, and I at­tract peo­ple who work hard.”

With re­spect to for­eign in­vestors, John said, “We have been speak­ing to them kind of one-on-one. So ba­si­cal­ly, they came to­geth­er en masse be­cause they have been ex­press­ing in­ter­est even pri­or to now. In ad­di­tion, we were beamed across the globe to sev­er­al cham­bers of com­merce across Eu­rope, across Sau­di Ara­bia. As a mat­ter of fact, very soon, I’ll be go­ing on a road­show to the Mid­dle East.”

The min­is­ter dis­missed ques­tions about the im­pact geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in the re­gion can pos­si­bly have on in­vest­ments.

Mean­while, giv­en that some of these projects will be in the Sea Lots and East Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ties, John was asked about con­cerns about gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is the process by which wealth­i­er peo­ple move in­to low­er-in­come neigh­bour­hoods, lead­ing to ris­ing costs and of­ten dis­plac­ing the orig­i­nal, poor­er res­i­dents.

How­ev­er, John said she recog­nis­es it won’t be an easy process.

“In 2015, the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said every­one who had been liv­ing in those com­mu­ni­ties, East Port-of-Spain, and are rent­ing HDC hous­es, give it to them for $1. It was $100, I think. But they didn’t pick it up. Be­cause when I said, Madam, you’re giv­ing away Port-of-Spain, she said, every­body de­serves a place to call home. I can’t promise it’s go­ing to be that easy again, in terms of the price. But cer­tain­ly, we are go­ing to work with the com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure that they are part of the build-out, and a part of what comes out, the out­put.”

But the Works Min­is­ter said these projects will bring more res­i­dents in­to the cap­i­tal city.