Richard Lord

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan has re­newed his call for Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing to pro­vide de­tails of the de­vel­op­ment projects in the city be­fore he can grants the re­quired ap­proval. Ram­bachan said so in an in­ter­view in re­sponse to a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment by the city cor­po­ra­tion list­ing some projects they claim have been sub­mit­ted but have con­sis­tent­ly failed to get min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval.

In the ad­ver­tise­ment, the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion al­so list­ed at least four projects not ap­proved un­der for­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma. They in­clude:

• Des­per­lie Cres­cent Home for the Aged-$4 mil­lion

• Con­struc­tion of pedes­tri­an mall-$4 mil­lion

• Pur­chase of ve­hi­cles to im­prove san­i­ta­tion across the city-$9.7 mil­lion

• Train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees-$700,000

The projects were in­clud­ed in an ex­pand­ed list sub­mit­ted to Ram­bachan af­ter he as­sumed the port­fo­lio about three months ago. New projects sub­mit­ted to him but not ap­proved in­clude:

• Con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment works at King George V Park

• Pro­vi­sion of home­work cen­tre and recre­ation­al in­fra­struc­ture, play park equip­ment and re­con­struc­tion of fenc­ing in bas­ket­ball court-$1.7 mil­lion

• Con­struc­tion of food court at the am­phithe­atre in St James to ad­dress un­con­trolled vend­ing in the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict-$1.5 mil­lion

• Con­struc­tion of vend­ing booths in down­town Port-of-Spain to ad­dress un­con­trolled vend­ing in the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict-$4 mil­lion

• Up­grade of the Cen­tral Mar­ket to en­cour­age in­creased so­cio-eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty-$2.5 mil­lion

• Up­grad­ing works to City Hall-$3.2 mil­lion

• Pro­vi­sion of ve­hi­cles to meet the core fleet re­quire­ments in sup­port of achiev­ing and main­tain­ing a clean city-$2 mil­lion

In the full-page ad­ver­tise­ment, the cor­po­ra­tion said it had an un­spent bal­ance of $43.9 mil­lion when the coun­cil as­sumed of­fice on Au­gust 3, 2010. Un­der the law, the un­spent bal­ance can­not be used with­out the ap­proval of the line min­is­ter. Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said he told Lee Sing at a meet­ing af­ter he as­sumed the lo­cal gov­ern­ment port­fo­lio that he should sub­mit the de­tails of the projects.

"Once that is done, the projects will be signed off for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of Port-of-Spain," Ram­bachan said. He said the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that mon­ey ex­pend­ed for lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions was used "in a prop­er and ef­fi­cient man­ner for their ben­e­fit." Ram­bachan said the un­spent bal­ance would be used "with my prod­ding, for the peo­ple's ben­e­fit."