Are you re­al­ly se­ri­ous? Your new es­ti­mate of the cost of the rapid rail project is near­ing the $20 bil­lion mark as I feared and have writ­ten about be­fore. The sum of US$67 mil­lion for a fea­si­bil­i­ty study? Again I protest this project. It is of no use to us as of now.

Where are the new lux­u­ry bus­es that were bought for the Sum­mit and were sup­posed to hit the roads to ease the bur­dens of the trav­el­ling pub­lic?

What is the im­pact of the wa­ter taxis on the eas­ing of the traf­fic and con­sumer bur­dens? Sure­ly by now you could give us fig­ures on how many peo­ple have trav­elled on the wa­ter taxis and should be able to say how many cars are off the road be­cause of your ini­tia­tives. These two projects should have eased the trav­el­ling bur­den some­what. If they have not then some­thing was very wrong in your plan­ning. You are now, be­cause of your poor vi­sion and fore­sight, try­ing to con­vince the pub­lic to bless your mas­sive and ut­ter­ly waste­ful rapid rail project.

You want to spend some mon­ey? Go ahead and ex­pand our roads. Make the high­ways ef­fi­cient by widen­ing, re­build­ing and re­pair­ing them. Build over­pass­es from To­co to Port-of-Spain. Re­pair and widen our bridges, most of which are in a se­ri­ous state of ne­glect. Build new roads from San­gre Grande to Cou­va or Ch­agua­nas, from San Fer­nan­do to Guayagua­yare via Rio Claro. Open up the coun­try for dri­ving. There are so many of our roads and bridges that are in need of com­plete over­haul­ing but in­stead you want to leave your lega­cy of a failed pub­lic trans­port sys­tem. Shame on you for want­i­ng to plunge the good cit­i­zens of T&T in some stu­pid debt that we can nev­er re­pay, just to please your ego.

Is it on­ly the peo­ple of Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons that need lux­u­ries and com­fort? What of the peo­ple from the South whose chil­dren, hus­bands and wives have to leave their homes at three in the morn­ing to be able to get away from the hor­ren­dous traf­fic in­to the cap­i­tal? Have you and your Cab­i­net mem­bers no heart? Where will the waste­ful spend­ing end? Well to­day I say no. No rail for you. Any­one else who feels this way, lend your sup­port, let your voic­es be heard. Let us start our protest from now. For those of you who do not, please don't cry when your great grand­chil­dren are still pay­ing for this trav­es­ty.

Wazir Mo­hammed

Via e-mail