Faced with fre­quent floods in the Oropouche Basin, head of the High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh has vowed to fight hard to re­move Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley from of­fice.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the of­fice of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) on Wednes­day, Kublals­ingh ac­cused Dr Row­ley of reneg­ing on a promise not to do any work on the high­way be­tween Debe and Mon De­sir with­out first con­sult­ing the HRM.

De­spite that promise, Kublals­ingh said, heavy equip­ment has moved in­to the Oropouche wet­lands bull­doz­ing sprawl­ing fruit trees and fill­ing up nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es.

“These bull­doz­ers have de­stroyed nat­ur­al grass­lands and trees and have di­min­ished the wet­land’s ca­pac­i­ty to man­age floods,” Kublals­ingh said.

“The Arm­strong Re­port warned that the CEC for the project was in­com­plete, flawed and should be sent back to the Min­istry of Works. A con­di­tion of the CEC stip­u­lates that no work should take place with­in 500 me­tres of prop­er­ties for which the own­er has not been ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed and re­lo­cat­ed.”

He said this con­sti­tut­ed large scale eco­nom­ic, so­cial and eco­log­i­cal crimes

“Those who com­mit these crimes, es­pe­cial­ly on a sig­nif­i­cant scale, should be charged and sen­tenced if found guilty. They should be jailed and made to pay hefty fines if found guilty. Laws should now be made by our Par­lia­ment to ad­dress and mit­i­gate such crimes,” he said.

Kublals­ingh said it was dis­turb­ing that af­ter fight­ing for 15 years to stop the smelter project he now had to go right back to stand­ing in front of bull­doz­ers to stop the de­struc­tion of the Oropouche wet­lands.

“It is not right. We now have to take the mat­ter to court and Kublals­ingh has to rep­re­sent. I have to spend my mon­ey, spend my wife’s mon­ey, spend my moth­er’s mon­ey, to rep­re­sent the HRM in court and what is T&T do­ing? I have to go back through this again?” he asked.

Kublals­ingh said min­is­ters past and present were re­spon­si­ble for pur­su­ing and ad­vo­cat­ing the Debe to Mon De­sir high­way.

“They should all be sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the an­nounced Com­mis­sion of En­quiry and in­ter­ro­gat­ed. The scope of the Com­mis­sion should be broad­ened to ad­dress all such crimes, from the project’s in­cep­tion in 2002- 2004, to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2010, to col­lapse in 2016 and its restart in 2019,” he added.

He said the HRM will be com­mis­sion­ing its own in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion of in­quiry soon.

MSJ po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah said mega projects such as the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion project fa­cil­i­tate cor­rup­tion.

“It en­rich­es a few at the ex­pense of the mass­es. It is a source of cor­rup­tion and we are ask­ing whether this high­way con­tract was the source of fund­ing for the last lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion and the on­go­ing gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign,” he said.

Ab­du­lah said T&T need­ed fun­da­men­tal change to stamp out cor­rup­tion.