Richard Lord

Flood­ing in Port-of-Spain will be a thing of the past by 2015. So said En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh in the Sen­ate dur­ing yes­ter­day's 2013 bud­get de­bate. "It is our hope that by the end of 2015 we will be in a po­si­tion to cure the flood­ing prob­lem in Port-of-Spain," he added.

Singh said the plan in­volved work on nine drainage pack­ages in the cap­i­tal city. He said the ex­er­cise would cre­ate in­con­ve­niences for peo­ple in the city but it was nec­es­sary to en­sure the flood­ing prob­lem was no more. He said the con­tri­bu­tion of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds was one of "hate and vit­ri­ol." Singh said Hinds' "hate was di­rect­ed at the Prime Min­is­ter and her fam­i­ly."

He said Hinds did not get his Gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ship on the ba­sis of mer­it. He added: "He got a PNM schol­ar­ship, not on mer­it (but) on the ba­sis that he was a mem­ber of the PNM. So he went to study law on the ba­sis of mon­ey that the state gave him, not on mer­it."

Singh al­so wad­ed in­to Hinds for his com­ments about the hir­ing of 33 In­di­ans in the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB). Singh la­belled those com­ments as "bla­tant racism." He said at the ADB the com­po­si­tion of the staff was 70 per cent African, five per cent mixed race and 25 per cent In­di­an.

The min­is­ter said out of the 35 peo­ple em­ployed at the in­sti­tu­tion un­der the PP Gov­ern­ment, ten were East In­di­an and 25 were oth­er races. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan shout­ed that Hinds should have to ap­pear be­fore the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges for his state­ment.