Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion MPs are ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain just how it in­tends to fund its ma­jor Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Plan un­veiled on Thurs­day, which showed ma­jor de­vel­op­ment projects for the coun­try.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert took to so­cial me­dia, ques­tion­ing where mon­ey was com­ing from, giv­en what he said were the present predica­ments fac­ing the coun­try.

“The Gov­ern­ment can’t pay salaries and al­lowances on time and hasn’t paid sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors for months. Mon­ey is clear­ly the prob­lem. Yet, in the midst of this chaos, the UNC has un­veiled fan­tas­tic plans to trans­form T&T in­to Dubai—com­plete with mas­sive sky­scrap­ers.”

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning al­so raised con­cerns about the fi­nanc­ing of the plan, but told the Gov­ern­ment the en­tire “blue­print” looked fa­mil­iar.

He ac­cused them of copy­ing his late fa­ther and for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning’s Vi­sion 2020 plan but giv­ing it a dif­fer­ent name.

“And the UNC should thank him for it!” Man­ning added yes­ter­day.

“The UNC is out of fresh ideas. The same plans they un­der­mined and crit­i­cised for al­most two decades are ex­act­ly the plans they want to im­ple­ment now.

“As we have been ask­ing from day one: where will the fund­ing come from? The UNC has de­stroyed every rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty they had in the short and medi­um term. Con­sid­er­ing ex­pen­di­ture with­out any plan for gen­er­at­ing the rev­enues to sup­port that ex­pen­di­ture is noth­ing short of fan­ta­sy.”

Man­ning called on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment to apol­o­gise to his late fa­ther.

“The UNC owes Patrick Man­ning an apol­o­gy for hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly un­der­min­ing every project he had for this coun­try to pro­mote de­vel­op­ment. The UNC’s PP gov­ern­ment used to crit­i­cise my fa­ther’s wa­ter­front ini­tia­tive and oth­er large-scale projects when they ac­cused his gov­ern­ment of ‘big spend­ing’ and ‘squan­der­ma­nia’ and caus­ing prob­lems, while they boast­ed of their so-called ‘trans­paren­cy’.

“But now they’re all us­ing the fa­cil­i­ties built in his tenure, and the same UNC is at­tempt­ing to claim sim­i­lar-type projects like his as their own,” Man­ning ex­plained.

“So I am say­ing that this was Patrick Man­ning’s vi­sion, and it was round­ly crit­i­cised and un­der­mined by the UNC. But now here it is back—like it nev­er left.”

Man­ning al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain the role of Gre­go­ry Hill and Christo­pher Sin­kler, who were among the speak­ers mak­ing pre­sen­ta­tions at Thurs­day’s launch.

Hill was de­scribed on the pro­gramme as a “re­gion­al in­vest­ment banker.” Sin­kler was de­scribed as an “in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist.” There was no oth­er in­for­ma­tion list­ed for each.

Man­ning added, “I have no idea what is the role of these gen­tle­men on this project, but they cer­tain­ly didn’t come up with this con­cept in a week’s time. We have all seen this be­fore: this is Patrick Man­ning’s Vi­sion 2020 Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Plan. The UNC should thank Patrick Man­ning for all their ideas. You’re wel­come!”

How­ev­er, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, rub­bished Man­ning’s claims that the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Plan was a copy of Vi­sion 2020.

“Yes­ter­day’s (Thurs­day) pre­sen­ta­tion and roll­out was flaw­less, world-class, com­pet­i­tive and def­i­nite­ly up to and sur­pass­ing glob­al stan­dards.

“The plans and con­cepts pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day are the most in­no­v­a­tive, far-reach­ing, rev­o­lu­tion­ary, co­he­sive and com­pre­hen­sive ever pre­sent­ed in T&T. Those who are mak­ing that claims (sic) are the same lazy, no plan, no work, no ini­tia­tive PNM who will try to spin any kind of non­sense to try to dis­tract from their lack of lead­er­ship, vi­sion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ac­com­plish­ments.

“What I know to be true, it has been a long time, T&T as a peo­ple have not been so hope­ful, ex­cit­ed and op­ti­mistic.”

Re­gard­ing how the projects will be fund­ed, John said, “It is ear­ly; one will have to await the pro­cure­ment process, etc, for fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion.”