Gail Alexan­der

The 13 house­holds which will be af­fect­ed in Phase Two of the East Pic­cadil­ly re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in units from Phase One, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the is­sue in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Row­ley said there should be no anx­i­ety on the slum clear­ance project. He said the Pic­cadil­ly project be­ing done by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion iden­ti­fied a por­tion for Phase One of the project and no res­i­dent will be dis­placed in that phase.

He said a rolling process will be used in re­lo­ca­tion. Row­ley al­so as­sured that East Port-of-Spain res­i­dents have “ex­cel­lent PNM MPs”.

On an­oth­er query, Row­ley said the first phase of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the COVID-19 vac­cines would in­volve front­line work­ers in­clud­ing health­care work­ers, peo­ple over age 60, those with dis­eases such as di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and im­muno-com­pro­mised dis­eases like lu­pus and can­cer.

Row­ley boast­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s “out­stand­ing com­pe­tence in” han­dling the COVID 19 is­sue would al­so ap­ply to the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

He said the tem­po­rary To­ba­go cor­rec­tion fa­cil­i­ty for COVID-19 pris­on­ers was closed since there were no more such COVID-19 cas­es.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed the cat­e­gories of those ob­tain­ing ex­emp­tions to re­turn to T&T. Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had fo­cussed ini­tial­ly on those who were “caught ac­ci­den­tal­ly” out­side when T&T closed its bor­der and is now deal­ing with oth­ers who want to come home.