Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says all of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) trans­port de­pots need ad­dress­ing.

“They’ve been ne­glect­ed for the past ten years,” he added.

The Ch­agua­nas de­pot, which was a hub on­ly, will be re­opened on Mon­day. Za­k­our vis­it­ed the San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin de­pots yes­ter­day to see the is­sues there.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at elec­tric and oth­er bus­es, as PTSC on­ly has 100 bus­es. In the past sev­en years, 71 PTSC routes were dis­con­tin­ued due to a lack of bus­es.

“Cur­rent­ly, we’re re­view­ing PTSC’s 79 routes and the 71 which were dis­con­tin­ued. The fleet is aged, and we’re look­ing at adding bus­es,” Za­k­our added.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and AI Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith, who an­nounced the launch of an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven dig­i­tal as­sis­tant called Anan­si, ad­mit­ted the change from pa­per-based sys­tems to tech­nol­o­gy would be a cul­ture shock, but once peo­ple see the ben­e­fits, there would be par­tic­i­pa­tion. Smith said the pub­lic had to re­tool for the world of work, or T&T would be left be­hind.

He brushed off queries on why the his­toric new sys­tem was named af­ter the in­fa­mous T&T folk­lore trick­ster Anan­si.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath al­so said some work had been done on the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. Not­ing is­sues found at the Cen­tre, the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence in St Ann’s and White­hall, he said a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions were made to the Gov­ern­ment by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and oth­ers on the up­keep and main­te­nance. He claimed they were not hap­py with the con­di­tions and func­tion­al­i­ty of these spaces.

Over the last two months, work start­ed on the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre to make it more func­tion­al, he said, adding more needs to be done.

, he added. No work has start­ed on White­hall or the St Ann’s res­i­dence. (GA)