Kevon Felmine

Tax­pay­ers will have to fork out an ad­di­tion­al $150 mil­lion to com­plete the al­ready over­bud­get Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba, south Trinidad. The fa­cil­i­ty, which was sched­uled to be opened for the 2007 Crick­et World Cup in the Caribbean, has so far cost more than $900 mil­lion, and re­mains in­com­plete. Speak­ing dur­ing a tour of the Oropouche East con­stituen­cy last Fri­day, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the es­ti­mate has been fi­nalised and will soon come up for gov­ern­ment ap­proval. Mooni­lal said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion re­fus­es to leave the con­tro­ver­sial project, which is be­ing man­aged by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott), in­com­plete.

The min­istry has com­plet­ed the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of bills for the project, which is one of the fi­nal step­ping stones to recom­mence con­struc­tion on the site. Mooni­lal said there were sev­er­al struc­tur­al and civ­il en­gi­neer­ing prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with the sta­di­um that need­ed to be at­tend­ed to and which would ac­count for a ma­jor share of the pro­ject­ed cost. "We have no in­ter­est in hav­ing the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, like the Biche High School, not hav­ing opened for ten years. But I am in­formed that we are look­ing at $150 mil­lion to com­plete it," Mooni­lal said. He said the Gov­ern­ment hoped to have the Chancery Lane Hos­pi­tal Com­plex in San Fer­nan­do in op­er­a­tion by year's end. Thus far, con­trac­tors have been able to com­plete at least eight floors out of the 18 planned.

He added that 99 per cent of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts South Cam­pus in San Fer­nan­do had been com­plet­ed and it was al­most ready for han­dover to the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. On the tour on Fri­day, Mooni­lal vis­it­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in his con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing Cuchawan Trace, Debe Trace, Tem­ple Road and Mo­hess Road, which are un­der­go­ing road re­pairs and drainage works. He said re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects in his con­stituen­cy were es­ti­mat­ed at $110 mil­lion.