Zahra Gor­don

Res­i­dents of the Di­a­mond Vale com­mu­ni­ty in Diego Mar­tin and coun­cil­lor Gail La Touche are wel­com­ing plans to ex­tend the Diego Mar­tin High­way. But Dr Amery Browne, MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, has ex­pressed some cyn­i­cism about the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment.

At Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Em­manuel George an­nounced plans to ex­tend the high­way and the con­struc­tion of a ve­hi­cle over­pass near Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite. The high­way ex­ten­sion will pro­ceed from Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard to the Diego Mar­tin Main Road.

How­ev­er, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, George said Gov­ern­ment was still at the ini­tial stages of the pro­posed con­struc­tion. He said, so far the min­istry had on­ly re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval for es­ti­mates put to­geth­er by tech­ni­cians. He added that site vis­its and oth­er as­sess­ments of the area are yet to be car­ried out.

Work is ex­pect­ed to be­gin on the ex­ten­sion and over­pass ear­ly next year George said. The ex­ten­sion will most like­ly con­tin­ue on the path along the riv­er bank as the high­way does now. At this time, it re­mains un­clear ex­act­ly how many peo­ple will be af­fect­ed by con­struc­tion or re­lo­ca­tion, he added.

Browne, how­ev­er, said Gov­ern­ment had made many pre­vi­ous an­nounce­ments about the high­way ex­ten­sion that were nev­er fol­lowed through. The ne­glect, he said, has caused res­i­dents years of un­nec­es­sary in­con­ve­nience. He al­so point­ed out that the el­e­va­tor in the Pow­der Mag­a­zine pedes­tri­an over­pass, built two years ago, worked on­ly on the day of the grand open­ing, and said there have been no at­tempts to fix it.

Nor­ma Jude, 88, who has lived on Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard for 30 years, said the ex­ten­sion is 15 years over­due. She said plans to ex­tend the high­way were stymied years ago by res­i­dents who did not want to re­lo­cate. But she be­lieves that the ex­ten­sion will al­le­vi­ate traf­fic and make it eas­i­er to tra­verse the area.

A Ms Carmi­no, who has lived on Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard for three years, said Gov­ern­ment has to en­sure re­lo­cat­ed res­i­dents are prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed. An­oth­er res­i­dent, a pub­lic ser­vant, who pre­ferred to re­main anony­mous, linked the high­way ex­ten­sion to progress, say­ing he sup­port­ed any gov­ern­ment ef­fort to de­vel­op the com­mu­ni­ty.