Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says while ef­forts are be­ing made to en­sure that var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties across T&T are up­grad­ed, he un­der­stands such de­vel­op­ment will not hap­pen at the pace and in the man­ner that pleas­es every­one be­cause not all cit­i­zens will sup­port cer­tain projects.

Dr Row­ley made the com­ment at the com­mis­sion­ing of the $185 mil­lion Diego Mar­tin-West­moor­ings In­ter­change yes­ter­day, as he not­ed that de­spite the ben­e­fits of eas­ing traf­fic, short­en­ing trav­el time and en­hanc­ing the safe­ty of mo­torists, some of the area’s res­i­dents still took is­sue with the project.

He lament­ed that peo­ple would find is­sues with any means of de­vel­op­ment if it did not ben­e­fit them di­rect­ly and urged them to look at the big­ger pic­ture.

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple spe­cif­ic to the com­mu­ni­ty, he re­ferred to dif­fer­ent mis­giv­ings peo­ple had over the con­struc­tion of the near­by Vic­to­ria Keyes Hous­ing Com­plex, from the de­vel­op­ment of the land to the name of the build­ing. Row­ley said it was im­pos­si­ble to please every­one.

He added that res­i­dents of the build­ing them­selves al­so took is­sue with the con­struc­tion of the in­ter­change.

“There were peo­ple from there who were op­posed to this and we had now to en­gage in try­ing to get ap­proval to pre­vent peo­ple from shut­ting down this project be­cause as far as they were con­cerned, it was not to suit them,” the Prime Min­is­ter told the gath­er­ing.

“And again we have to make the point, it is not on­ly al­ways about you. It’s about the wider com­mu­ni­ty and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

Row­ley said be­fore the con­struc­tion of the in­ter­change, nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fer­ent lanes to head fur­ther west for mo­torists was a com­pli­cat­ed and of­ten dan­ger­ous task, which was a con­cern to him for el­der­ly dri­vers.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that crit­i­cisms from a few res­i­dents was not enough to de­tract from a project that would ease traf­fic and en­sure the safe­ty of thou­sands of mo­torists.

He said at least one res­i­dent even raised ob­jec­tions over the cer­e­mo­ny to mark the open­ing of the in­ter­change, over fears it would cause con­ges­tion for Christ­mas shop­pers.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, how do you please our fel­low cit­i­zens? Is it pos­si­ble?” Row­ley quipped.

The in­ter­change was joint­ly con­struct­ed by Ju­nior Sam­my and the Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny at a cost of $185,478,793.

Row­ley, in his ad­dress, al­so knocked ru­mours which sug­gest­ed the project would cost $2 bil­lion.

He said such ru­mours were un­found­ed and dis­missed any sug­ges­tion that the in­ter­change was con­struct­ed in his con­stituen­cy of Diego Mar­tin West out of any favouritism, not­ing that even he had a hard time reach­ing Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan.

“We have prob­lems with the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port eh. He’s not do­ing enough in our con­stituen­cies, he is all over the coun­try, from Point Fortin to To­co, you can’t find him.

“And when we fi­nal­ly meet him, it’s just ‘wait, wait’ we have wait­ed all along but this project was worth wait­ing for.”

Dur­ing his re­marks, Diego Mar­tin North East MP Colm Im­bert said the in­ter­change was orig­i­nal­ly con­cep­tu­alised fol­low­ing a dis­cus­sion with Row­ley in 2006.

Im­bert added that while Diego Mar­tin was one of the first ar­eas to be de­vel­oped un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), there were some who felt that oth­er ar­eas were in need of at­ten­tion.

“A view de­vel­oped that Diego Mar­tin got enough and that it was time for oth­er ar­eas to get and that view per­sist­ed for al­most 20 years,” Im­bert said.

“Now that view is no more, so thank you Dr Row­ley, thank you NID­CO, thank you Min­is­ter of Works, I look for­ward to dri­ving on this won­der­ful project.”

For his part, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga said he was op­ti­mistic that the con­struc­tion of the in­ter­change was not sim­ply an­oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al project but that it would en­hance con­nec­tiv­i­ty by short­en­ing the com­mut­ing times for stu­dents and work­ers, there­by im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.