JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Three months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, promis­ing 50,919 jobs, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jer­lean John says as­pects of the project should be­gin by mid-year.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, John said there have 965 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est in the 129 projects list­ed in the plan.

John and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have vis­it­ed sev­er­al coun­tries since the launch in No­vem­ber last year. She said in­ter­ests came from Pe­ru, the US, Nether­lands, Chi­na, Bel­gium, South Africa, In­dia, Chi­na, France and the Unit­ed King­dom. Asked which en­ti­ties ex­pressed in­ter­est, John said she could not say.

Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of TT (Ude­cott) chair­man Shankar Bidaisee in­ter­ject­ed, how­ev­er, say­ing the names of the in­ter­est­ed par­ties are con­fi­den­tial.

“That is con­fi­den­tial and with­in the re­mit of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and there­fore the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act (PDAC) com­mit­tee. I don’t even know who sub­mit­ted, and I will nev­er know. And I’m not in­ter­est­ed in it. The chair­man does not get in­volved in ten­ders. So that in­for­ma­tion is not pub­lic at all.”

John said there will be mul­ti­ple projects tak­ing place si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and she there­fore could not itemise which will be first, with Bidaisee again in­ter­ject­ing to say it de­pends on whether the projects will be gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment or pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships.

John said: “We are hav­ing mul­ti­ple projects, 129 projects, we can­not se­quence them one, two, three, four. So, we are gonna do some cat­e­gories of projects. So, it’s very like­ly maybe about 40 projects will be rolled out at the same time, be­cause you have to do it in kind of waves.”

Af­ter the pro­pos­als are re­viewed, sub­mis­sions eval­u­at­ed and re­quest pro­pos­als is­sued, the awards of con­tracts should be­gin be­tween May and June, John said.

She said there will not be any neg­a­tive im­pact on com­mu­ni­ties caused by the projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front and In­vaders Bay, as the pro­posed sites are green­field sites. John added that if any­one is to be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, there will be pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

“We are do­ing a con­sol­i­dat­ed hub to speed up all of these ap­provals,” she said, not­ing this is to en­sure that the projects move swift­ly and with lit­tle hic­cups.

While an in­tra-is­land fer­ry ser­vice is part of the plan, John said the fo­cus now is on build­ing this coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty be­fore en­gag­ing in the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in Jan­u­ary 2024, spoke of the re­gion­al fer­ry to move raw ma­te­ri­als, fresh pro­duce and man­u­fac­tured goods be­tween Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Re­gard­ing the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, John said by the end of the month it should be hand­ed over to the Min­istry of Trans­port, as paving the run­way is on­go­ing.

“I will go (to To­ba­go) at the end of this month with the ex­pec­ta­tion that one could say this air­port has achieved prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion and hand it over to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, through the min­istry.”

She added that while there are plans to cre­ate na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty com­plex­es, in­clud­ing one for the pris­ons, the pre­vi­ous plan to con­struct a new Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in Mt Hope is still on course and an up­date on the con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed with­in the next three months.