Richard Lord

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Min­is­ter has dis­missed re­ports that Cab­i­net had agreed to a 20 per cent pay hike for po­lice of­fi­cers.The re­port was car­ried in an­oth­er news­pa­per yes­ter­day.Warn­er de­nied the re­port when ques­tioned about it af­ter yes­ter­day's sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny to start con­struc­tion of an el­e­vat­ed Uri­ah But­ler High­way at the in­ter­sec­tion of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way yes­ter­day.He said the high­way project would take a max­i­mum of 24 months to com­plete. Warn­er said about 750 peo­ple would be em­ployed at the peak of con­struc­tion.

He said no de­ci­sion to ap­prove a 20 per cent hike in salaries for po­lice of­fi­cers had been tak­en in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net."The cab­i­net of which I am a mem­ber, we nev­er agreed to that," Warn­er in­sist­ed.In his ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny, Warn­er said that the protest ac­tion by po­lice, pub­lic ser­vants and oth­ers had es­ca­lat­ed since the PP Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice, be­cause "the prime min­is­ter is a woman, par­tic­u­lar­ly an In­di­an woman...Every­body want every­thing same time."

And he said the breathal­yser had not had the de­sired ob­jec­tives since be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in this coun­try."Breathal­yser tests are done vie-ki-vie, so it hasn't re­duced the drunk dri­ving on the roads, it has not re­duced the car­nage," Warn­er said.He said new mea­sures would have to be im­ple­ment­ed to en­force the laws and as a con­se­quence, 85 traf­fic war­dens would be put on the na­tion's roads to help curb traf­fic of­fences.

Warn­er al­so warned mo­torists against us­ing their mo­bile phones while dri­ving with­out hands-free de­vices.A law, which is now in ef­fect, im­pos­es a fine of $1,500 or three months' im­pris­on­ment for any­one found guilty of breach­ing it.Warn­er said mo­bil­i­sa­tion for the start of con­struc­tion of the $7.2 bil­lion San Fer­nan­do/Point Fortin High­way would be­gin on Thurs­day.