Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment is in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in the de­vel­op­ment of Moru­ga. Row­ley was speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Gran Chemin Fish­ing Cen­tre at La Lune Road in Moru­ga on Fri­day.

Built by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the fa­cil­i­ty con­cludes phase one of the project.

Phase two in­volves the es­tab­lish­ment of a shel­tered off­shore port. Row­ley said de­vel­op­ing Moru­ga, fo­cus­ing on road in­fra­struc­ture, agri­cul­ture and fish­ing was part of the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

“That’s why the Gov­ern­ment has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in­vest­ing in bring­ing Moru­ga in­to the na­tion­al econ­o­my. It doesn’t come by just say­ing so or by flick­ing a switch. It large­ly comes by build­ing the in­fra­struc­ture so that the pop­u­la­tion on the South Coast can be con­nect­ed to the rest of the na­tion for more rea­sons than one,” he said.

Re­call­ing that the Gov­ern­ment spent sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey to es­tab­lish an agro-pro­cess­ing park in Moru­ga, the Prime Min­is­ter urged res­i­dents not to take these in­vest­ments light­ly. He urged young peo­ple to con­sid­er a ca­reer in the fish­ing in­dus­try.

“Many young men and women in this area can do ex­treme­ly well if they at­tach their in­ter­est to what’s in the sea out­side be­cause the sea is yours, the re­sources out there are yours, and if you spend your time in­vest­ing out there, work­ing out there, and bring­ing in fish ... once the fish comes to land, this fa­cil­i­ty is here to make sure that you get the great ben­e­fit of feed­ing the na­tion, en­sur­ing our food se­cu­ri­ty, and look­ing for ex­port out­side of the na­tion be­cause one thing about fish is there’s a tremen­dous mar­ket for fish across the world.”

Mean­while, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said ten­ders for Phase 2 of the project have al­ready been is­sued and will close in March. Claim­ing that the project was shelved un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, he told res­i­dents that the project’s fu­ture de­pends on how they vote in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

“So I want to give you, the peo­ple of Moru­ga, the as­sur­ance that once you ex­er­cise your right and you vote the right way, no­body will stop this project.”

Sinanan said they had em­barked on a road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme in Moru­ga cost­ing $175 mil­lion to $180 mil­lion, which is still on­go­ing, and he in­tends to ap­proach the Cab­i­net soon for ap­proval for a sec­ondary roads pro­gramme.

The fish­ing cen­tre of­fers mar­ket stalls, 91 stor­age units for boat en­gines, equip­ment, and fish­ing sup­plies, a CCTV sys­tem, chillers and cold stor­age, wa­ter stor­age, a waste­water treat­ment plant, park­ing, ex­ter­nal so­lar-pow­ered night light­ing, and a se­cu­ri­ty booth.

An­a­lysts weigh in on Sinanan

Mean­while, two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have ex­pressed dif­fer­ent views on Sinanan’s state­ments at the event. Dr Win­ford James be­lieves the min­is­ter should not have used the func­tion to cam­paign. “Par­lia­ment has not been dis­solved. And Sinanan is still a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. It’s un­eth­i­cal,” said James in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia.

How­ev­er, Dr Shane Mo­hammed dis­agrees. He said the coun­try was in pol­i­tics or cam­paign sea­son, and it was ex­pect­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would use any project as lever­age to con­vince the elec­torate and pop­u­la­tion that they have per­formed and done work strate­gi­cal­ly.

Giv­en that Moru­ga/Table­land is a crit­i­cal seat that the Gov­ern­ment lost in 2020, he said they will be aim­ing to win it back. Mo­hammed added that it was not un­rea­son­able, un­think­able or un­eth­i­cal for a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment to high­light in his speech the time­line for which a project would have been de­liv­ered and in­di­cate that their op­po­nents would not have ear­marked the project as a pri­or­i­ty.

Sim­i­lar­ly, he said the Op­po­si­tion was go­ing to lever­age any op­por­tu­ni­ty to use crit­i­cal na­tion­al is­sues as am­mu­ni­tion against the Gov­ern­ment.