As the Gov­ern­ment starts the land recla­ma­tion at Kings Wharf for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al Rawi ex­plains that get­ting the job done will take less time than get­ting the rel­e­vant ap­provals.

Speak­ing at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) 2024 Re­vised Mu­nic­i­pal Sol­id Waste Sec­tor Pol­i­cy Frame­work at Hy­att Trinidad, Al Rawi said the ex­er­cise of cre­at­ing 3.8 hec­tors of hand in San Fer­nan­do would take then six weeks, while it took them sev­en years to get ap­provals from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the EMA the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) Ap­pli­ca­tion process re­quires the EMA to as­sess po­ten­tial im­pacts to the re­ceiv­ing en­vi­ron­ment, which may arise out of pro­posed new or sig­nif­i­cant­ly mod­i­fied ac­tiv­i­ties. Ac­tiv­i­ties or projects which re­quire a CEC are out­lined in the CEC (Des­ig­nat­ed Ac­tiv­i­ties) Or­der, (as amend­ed).