Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s To­ba­go Coun­cil An­cil Den­nis has crit­i­cised the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly for fail­ing to ob­tain the nec­es­sary ap­proval, twice, for the $70 mil­lion Friend­ship Con­nec­tor Road Project.

A High Court in­junc­tion grant­ed to a fam­i­ly yes­ter­day forced work on the project to come to a stop, the sec­ond time le­gal ac­tion had stopped the ac­tiv­i­ty. (See page 6)

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Den­nis said he was prepar­ing to make a for­mal com­plaint to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion against Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Trevor James.

“We are say­ing the ac­tions of Trevor James, aid­ed and abet­ted by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, are tan­ta­mount to not on­ly the de­lib­er­ate break­ing of the law but the dere­lic­tion of du­ty, a be­tray­al of their oath of of­fice.”

How­ev­er, Den­nis said the in­junc­tion was noth­ing for mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion on the is­land to re­joice over. He said the first in­junc­tion on the project, brought be­fore the High Court last May by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency, costs To­ba­go a hefty bill.

“This is a sad de­vel­op­ment be­cause when it was the EMA sit­u­a­tion, the same Trevor James, re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader, told To­ba­go the court mat­ter cost To­ba­go in ex­cess of $1 mil­lion.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, James said he will re­spond when he has a copy of the in­junc­tion in hand.

The project is cur­rent­ly 75 per cent com­plet­ed and is ex­pect­ed to be fin­ished by the end of March.

All at­tempts to reach Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.