Gov­ern­ment's tim­ing for the start of the $196 mil­lion Va­len­cia In­ter­sec­tion to To­co Main Road up­grade is be­ing ques­tioned by peo­ple in the pub­lic do­main who claim it is part of a gen­er­al elec­tion ploy.

On Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, To­co/San­gre Grande MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan turned the sod for the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project in Va­len­cia which is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed on the eve of the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The ques­tion was put to Sinanan on Fri­day, two days af­ter the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

Told the pop­u­la­tion felt the up­grade was the per­fect tim­ing to gar­ner votes for the To­co/San­gre Grande seat in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, as many peo­ple were sug­gest­ing, Sinanan shot back, "Any­thing that is an elec­tion ploy is a good thing. If it wasn't good, it wouldn't be an elec­tion ploy. So, say­ing some­thing is an elec­tion ploy means it's a good thing. Any­time you hear a politi­cian say it's an elec­tion ploy, that means it is a good thing. Be­cause no­body would bring an elec­tion ploy if it wasn’t good. I am hap­py it’s an elec­tion ploy.”

He said whether it was an elec­tion ploy or not, he was hap­py for the peo­ple on the east­ern seaboard, in­sist­ing that “for too long they have been ne­glect­ed”.

“Every sin­gle road you do you will have de­trac­tors," he added.

$42 m for the first three pack­ages; 500 jobs to be cre­at­ed

The 20-month project—which in­volves eight pack­ages through com­pet­i­tive bid­ding—is be­ing un­der­tak­en by con­trac­tors Lutchmesingh Trans­port Com­pa­ny, LCB Trans­port Com­pa­ny, and Har­ryper­sad and Sons.

Works which be­gan last month will be done in two phas­es.

These in­clude milling, cul­vert con­struc­tion, paving, road widen­ing, and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works.

So far, the first three pack­ages have been award­ed at $42 mil­lion with the re­main­ing five pack­ages to­talling $154 mil­lion to be award­ed next month.

Of the eight, pack­ages five and six would cost the most based on the widen­ing of the road and slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion works to be un­der­tak­en.

The 12.4 kilo­me­tre road­way which starts at Va­len­cia Junc­tion and ends on the To­co Main Road is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate 500 jobs.

The up­grade is part of a road net­work to the pro­posed To­co port—a mega project which will pro­vide an ar­ray of fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing a ma­ri­na for 30 plea­sure ves­sels, car­go stor­age, boat lifts, two-storey ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing, wait­ing lounge for 300 pas­sen­gers, cus­toms of­fice, coast guard fa­cil­i­ties and ho­tel, which Sinanan said would open up the north­east­ern re­gion to busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, leisure, agri­cul­ture, and tourism.

There would be lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties as jobs would be cre­at­ed in the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties along the coast.

Sinanan: One pack­age per con­trac­tor

Sinanan sat down with Guardian Me­dia in the pres­ence of pro­gramme di­rec­tor of Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Hay­den Phillip, whose agency is man­ag­ing the road up­grade, and at­tor­ney Garvin Gon­salves to speak about the project at his Port-of-Spain of­fice.

He gave the as­sur­ance that no con­trac­tor will be award­ed more than one pack­age.

"At the end of the day, we are ex­pect­ing that all the pack­ages will be award­ed by me," Sinanan said.

He said the min­istry does not en­vis­age any vari­a­tion on the project.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause of the ter­rain in cer­tain ar­eas, you re­al­ly don't know what to ex­pect."

The $196 mil­lion is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed from the min­istry’s 2018/2018 bud­get.

But this may not be the fi­nal cost for the project, Sinanan ad­mit­ted. He said that PURE will try to keep its cost with­in its stip­u­lat­ed bud­get, as they would have to cater to "un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances" such as land slip­page in the up­com­ing rainy sea­son.

He said works to be done would fall with­in the con­tract's con­tin­gency.

"If it goes be­yond the con­tin­gency then we would have to go back to Cab­i­net to say this was your ap­proved bud­get and these are ex­tra funds that are re­quired,” Sinanan said.

So far, Phillip said on­ly one ven­dor who oc­cu­pied the road re­serve has been re­lo­cat­ed, while ne­go­ti­a­tions are be­ing made by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands for the ac­qui­si­tion of a small par­cel of land.

No land­slip re­pair, new road in­stead in Va­len­cia

A draft of the project showed there would be two round­abouts—one at Va­len­cia Junc­tion and the oth­er at Ojoe Road Con­nec­tor, in ad­di­tion to five util­i­ty cor­ri­dors.

Al­so, five ar­eas were mapped out as land “ac­qui­si­tion" sites.

"We are try­ing to min­imise land ac­qui­si­tion be­cause the State has a lot of land in the area that we can use. If we have to ac­quire land it will be min­i­mal.," Phillip said.

He said PURE in­tend­ed to build a new road in Va­len­cia along the route where there was one of two ma­jor land­slips.

"The cost to re­pair the land­slip will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than build­ing a new road. There is al­so no guar­an­tee that the land­slip would stand up to the test of time be­cause of land move­ment," Sinanan in­ter­ject­ed,

Sinanan promised the up­grade will open up east Trinidad with the in­fra­struc­ture to make it easy for com­merce.

At the sod turn­ing, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that cit­i­zens in the north­east­ern re­gion would re­main "be­hind God back" un­less there were de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture, a fact which Sinanan agreed with.

He said years ago San­gre Grande and Ch­agua­nas were poised at the same lev­el.

To­day, he said, Ch­agua­nas was burst­ing at its seams with busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and aim­ing to be­come a city, while San­gre Grande con­tin­ues to re­main stag­nant.

Switch­ing his con­ver­sa­tion to the To­co port, which was con­cep­tu­alised in the 1980s, Sinanan said things were be­ing fi­nalised by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and when com­plet­ed they es­ti­mate that 3,000 per­ma­nent well-paid jobs would be avail­able.

Sinanan said the north­east­ern re­gion has the low­est pay­ing jobs, high­est un­em­ploy­ment rate and pover­ty in the coun­try.

He al­so es­ti­mat­ed that 3,100 ve­hi­cles would be able to be trans­port­ed from To­co to To­ba­go dai­ly on the fer­ry ser­vice.

“Once we get an ef­fi­cient (fer­ry) ser­vice every­thing will im­prove up there. Once we are suc­cess­ful with that, the port will go out for ten­der. This port will be able to bridge the gap be­tween To­co and To­ba­go. You could have fer­ries op­er­at­ing every hour…every two hours rather and once a day and you have to come in Port-of-Spain and wait the whole day and the time you reach To­ba­go it is in the night.”

It would cost the Gov­ern­ment far less to op­er­ate a fer­ry ser­vice from To­co.

“So that port in To­co is a mul­ti­pur­pose port. That is why this Gov­ern­ment said this has to be a pri­or­i­ty if you want growth. To­co is an ide­al spot for tourism.”

It would al­so re­duce con­struc­tion cost in To­ba­go by 25 per cent, he said.

“A truck us­ing the seabridge ser­vice from To­co can go To­ba­go and come back in hours."

Asked if San­dals Re­sorts can play a part in the con­struc­tion of the pro­posed ho­tel, Sinanan said he could not speak for that since this does not fall un­der his purview.

“Again, what I can talk about…you see, the same push back that San­dals got from a few big mouth peo­ple is the same prob­lem we faced when we start­ed the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la High­way. I un­der­stand how San­dals felt. They didn’t need us we need­ed them.”

'I'm get­ting licks for bad roads in Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va'

Since the sod turn­ing, Sinanan has faced a bar­rage of crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia, as many peo­ple com­plained that roads in their com­mu­ni­ty re­main im­pass­able and in a de­plorable state.

Sinanan said the min­istry has been un­der­tak­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, high­way and up­grad­ing works dai­ly, con­fess­ing that there are "so many roads have to be dealt with while fund­ing has been chal­leng­ing".

He ad­mit­ted that there was a “cash flow” con­straint, giv­en the coun­try's eco­nom­ic state.

Sinanan said his min­istry was on­ly re­spon­si­ble for 21 per cent of roads in T&T, stat­ing that there are oth­er agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for road main­te­nance.

“Most of the roads I have been get­ting licks for in Ch­agua­nas and Cou­va fall un­der the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion that they con­trol.”

BOX

To­co-Grande vot­ing pat­terns

Though the con­stituen­cy had been his­tor­i­cal­ly de­scribed as a PNM strong­hold, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion man­aged to snatch it from their hands.

Since then, the seat which has the high­est vot­ing pop­u­la­tion in all 41 con­stituen­cies has been one to watch, as it can eas­i­ly sway on ei­ther side.

In 2007, un­der the then lead­er­ship of then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning the seat was con­test­ed by In­dra Ojah-Ma­haraj who cap­tured 9,557 votes, edg­ing out UNC’s Keshore Satram and Con­gress of the Peo­ple can­di­date Lena Br­ere­ton-Wolffe who se­cured 3,214 votes.

The to­tal vot­ing pop­u­la­tion then was 26,721.

Three years lat­er in 2010, the seat which grew to 27,298 reg­is­tered vot­ers man­aged to slip through the PNM’s hands when its can­di­date Er­ic “Pink Pan­ther” Tay­lor was top­pled by UNC’s Ru­pert Grif­fith (now de­ceased) who at­tained 9,325 votes.

Tay­lor, a staunch par­ty faith­ful fought tooth and nail to re­tain the seat but on­ly man­aged to muster 8,625 votes.

The de­feat came as a hard blow for the PNM.

In 2015, the seat went back in­to the PNM's bo­som when its can­di­date Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith beat her ri­vals Dayne Fran­cois of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty and UNC’s Brent San­cho.

Of the 30,149 elec­torates reg­is­tered to vote in 41 polling di­vi­sions, Jen­nings-Smith took home 12,005 votes while San­cho and Fran­cois trailed be­hind with 8,101 and 226 votes re­spec­tive­ly.