Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Emi­ly Dick-Forde says there have been no cost over­runs on the project to up­grade the Ma­que­ripe beach fa­cil­i­ties.

She said that in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a ques­tion on the Or­der Pa­per by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Gail Mer­hair. Dick-Forde said ad­di­tion­al works were re­quired to the orig­i­nal project as a re­sult of the col­lapse of a slope ad­ja­cent to the sea wall that was be­ing ex­tend­ed.

She gave a break­down of the costs in­curred:

�2 Ex­ten­sion of the sea wall: $1,210,200, plus VAT; and,

�2 con­struc­tion of a but­tress on 15 me­tres of the ex­ist­ing sea wall: $192, 500, plus VAT

Dick-Forde said plan­ning ap­proval for the project had been ob­tained from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion. In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal, in re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, said a new con­sumer rights pol­i­cy would be im­ple­ment­ed short­ly to bet­ter pro­tect cus­tomers of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad Ltd – own­ers of Flow. Mer­hair want­ed to know what mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment planned to im­ple­ment to "pro­tect cus­tomers from the un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ser­vice pro­vid­ed" by the com­pa­ny.

Parsan­lal said the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) had tak­en cer­tain mea­sures aimed at en­sur­ing a high­er qual­i­ty of ser­vice to the pub­lic. He said: "The au­thor­i­ty, in the near fu­ture, will be en­gag­ing in fur­ther ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing in­creased mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment of qual­i­ty of ser­vice oblig­a­tions and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a new Con­sumer Rights Pol­i­cy, which will fur­ther en­hance the pro­tec­tions af­ford­ed to con­sumers of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing ser­vices in T&T."