Richard Lord

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil Afra Ray­mond in­sists no work will take place on the con­tro­ver­sial Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion Project. Ray­mond spoke in a brief in­ter­view with re­porters af­ter yes­ter­day's agree­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and civ­il so­ci­ety groups dur­ing four-hour talks at the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Port-of-Spain.

The JCC, the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (Fi­tun), the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) and Women Work­ing for So­cial Progress (Work­ing Women)?met with Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh, ju­nior Works Min­is­ter Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine and Nid­co pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles.

The three-point agree­ment was pre­sent­ed by George, who said the meet­ing was "very fruit­ful in point­ing the way for­ward." En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh be­gan his hunger strike 19 days ago be­cause the con­trac­tor had start­ed clear­ing the site for con­struc­tion of the seg­ment. Asked to clar­i­fy if the agree­ment pro­vid­ed for work on the con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion to con­tin­ue, Charles said: "Yes."

JCC & George res­o­lu­tion

George and Singh re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue when ques­tioned for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Ray­mond was asked and he in­sist­ed no work would con­tin­ue on the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment. "No, no, the sec­tion in ques­tion, no," Ray­mond said.

Told by re­porters the agree­ment said work would con­tin­ue on the high­way sites by the Gov­ern­ment, Ray­mond said: ?"I am a par­ty to the agree­ment. I know what I am telling you.

"The sec­tion of the high­way that is in dis­pute, there is no work go­ing on there now and no work is go­ing to start there. That's it." Asked if the con­trac­tor was not in pos­ses­sion of the land, Ray­mond said:?"No, not at all. Not in pos­ses­sion, not in pos­ses­sion. All of that was ham­mered out. Not in pos­ses­sion. I am stand­ing on this, okay?"

He said he was not sure the ex­er­cise to be done by the JCC would an­swer Kublals­ingh's con­cerns, but said: "We will at­tempt to ad­dress the con­cerns." Ear­li­er, in his brief speech, Ray­mond said the ex­er­cise was "a very chal­leng­ing dis­cus­sion and it was nec­es­sary for the res­o­lu­tion of this im­passe in the in­ter­est of restor­ing pub­lic trust."

He said the JCC?and oth­er groups were hop­ing that "Dr Kublals­ingh will give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to end­ing that hunger strike." Ray­mond said he hoped Kublals­ingh's group would al­so sup­ply doc­u­ments to the JCC work­ing team, which is to be chaired by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong. He said the rest of the team was yet to be de­ter­mined.

Ray­mond said there was a need for the tone and lan­guage from both the Gov­ern­ment and the High­way Re-route Move­ment to be more civilised. "We need to re­cov­er a more civilised tone. We need to re­cov­er a more rea­son­able tone. This is a very im­por­tant step in restor­ing our ci­vil­i­ty."

Sig­na­to­ries to the agree­ment were George, Singh, Roop­nar­ine, JCC's Ray­mond and mem­bers Win­ston Ri­ley, Emile Elias, Fi­tun pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my and Charles, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) and Women Work­ing for So­cial Jus­tice.

The Agree­ment

• The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd will make avail­able to the JCC all the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion in its pos­ses­sion on the project in re­spect of the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the high­way ex­ten­sion

• The JCC will ex­am­ine all the doc­u­men­ta­tion pro­vid­ed by Nid­co and all oth­er rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion and pro­duce a re­port with­in 60 days from to­day's date to Nid­co for its con­sid­er­a­tion and its pub­li­ca­tion there­after

• Work will con­tin­ue on sites of the high­way re­leased to the con­trac­tor.