DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has been asked to dis­close the stud­ies and re­ports he con­sid­ered in re­cent­ly de­cid­ing to al­ter the speed lim­its for cer­tain roads and in­ter­sec­tions. 

The dis­clo­sure re­quest, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA), was made by lawyers for blog­ger Vishal Per­sad in a let­ter sent yes­ter­day to Sinanan and the of­fi­cial of his min­istry re­spon­si­ble for re­spond­ing to such re­quests. 

In the le­gal cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan claimed that his client, who is the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the blog “Mil­len­ni­als for Change 868”, is seek­ing the re­ports as part of a study to de­ter­mine if the new speed lim­its were ar­bi­trar­i­ly im­posed and were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. 

“The FOIA ap­pli­cant (Per­sad) in­tends to high­light cor­rup­tion, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic funds, en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues, so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues, racism and gen­der equal­i­ty through his projects,” Ramkhal­whan said. 

He not­ed that over the past few years, Sinanan had utilised his pow­er un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act to ad­just the speed lim­it for cer­tain roads. 

He added that the most re­cent came last Thurs­day when changes were made to two sec­tions of the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant, parts of the West­ern Main Road, a sec­tion of the South Trunk Road and roads and ramps con­nect­ed to the Curepe In­ter­change. 

“At no ma­te­r­i­al time has the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port dis­closed the doc­u­ments and/or in­for­ma­tion con­sid­ered to for­mu­late the speed lim­its im­posed by the Spe­cial Speed Lim­it Or­ders,” he said. 

Sinanan and the min­istry were giv­en un­til Ju­ly 14 to re­spond to the re­quest.