KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the long-stalled San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Project dur­ing the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get de­bate.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John told Guardian Me­dia that Per­sad-Bisses­sar will speak on the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ini­tia­tive, which was first ini­ti­at­ed un­der a for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Al­low the Prime Min­is­ter to say what she has to say dur­ing the bud­get de­bate, which will be in a few days’ time. There are a lot of things hap­pen­ing,” John said.

The wa­ter­front project has a long his­to­ry of shift­ing po­lit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties. It un­der­went sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions un­der the UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment (2010–2015), be­fore the PNM turned the sod in Jan­u­ary 2021, launch­ing a mul­ti-phase re­de­vel­op­ment to re­vi­talise the area from King’s Wharf to Hat­ter’s Beach.

The plan en­vi­sioned a mix of com­mer­cial and pub­lic spaces, in­clud­ing land recla­ma­tion at King’s Wharf, con­struc­tion of a mod­ern fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty, a parkade, and new in­fra­struc­ture.

How­ev­er, progress has been re­peat­ed­ly de­layed by land ac­qui­si­tion and oc­cu­pa­tion is­sues, with sev­er­al busi­ness­es still lo­cat­ed along the in­com­plete road­way.

Since last April’s gen­er­al elec­tion, work has large­ly come to a halt. The an­tic­i­pat­ed La­dy Hailes by the Sea—once tout­ed as the “One Wood­brook Place of the South”—re­mains idle, along with the planned ex­pan­sion of La­dy Hailes Av­enue and the restora­tion of Plaza San Car­los.

Dur­ing the cam­paign, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then Op­po­si­tion Leader, pledged to scrap the PNM’s pro­pos­al for high-end wa­ter­front apart­ments. In­stead, she said a UNC gov­ern­ment would pri­ori­tise in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing projects to cre­ate jobs and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.

She al­so ques­tioned the PNM’s de­ci­sion to award more than $300 mil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts “on the eve of an elec­tion,” sug­gest­ing the move lacked trans­paren­cy and con­sid­er­a­tion for af­ford­abil­i­ty.

“Who are those hous­es for? Who can af­ford that land?” she asked at the time.

At Tues­day’s Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Post-Bud­get Meet­ing at C3 Cen­tre, Ste Madeleine, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh urged Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to clar­i­fy the project’s sta­tus.

Singh said the south­ern re­gion has been grap­pling with an eco­nom­ic slow­down and that res­i­dents view the wa­ter­front re­de­vel­op­ment as key to re­vi­tal­is­ing the area.

“Port-of-Spain has its wa­ter­front—they are do­ing a lot of good things with that—and San Fer­nan­do needs its own to pur­sue tourism, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, hous­ing, ho­tels, sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, fish­eries, and so on. We ex­pect to hear about that,” Singh said.

Tan­coo, who de­scribed him­self as a “south­ern­er,” ac­knowl­edged those con­cerns and said the down­turn has been wors­ened by re­duced ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor. He as­sured that the gov­ern­ment would not halt projects for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons and con­firmed that the wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment had al­ready reached an ad­vanced stage.

“I think I may be speak­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the Min­is­ter of Works’ bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, but I be­lieve we will be pur­su­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of the crit­i­cal work that was al­ready done to de­vel­op San Fer­nan­do and south Trinidad gen­er­al­ly,” Tan­coo said.

He added that the gov­ern­ment views pub­lic spend­ing as an in­vest­ment in cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of which ad­min­is­tra­tion ini­ti­at­ed a project.

“I think we have to move past that. We have to get in­to ma­tu­ri­ty in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing of the gov­ern­ment.”