SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Phase one of the Point Fortin High­way will be com­plet­ed in March 2013, ac­cord­ing to Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. She told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that 60 per cent of phase one has al­ready been com­plet­ed and the Gol­con­da to Debe leg of the project will be com­plet­ed in six months.

Roop­nar­ine said the nec­es­sary cer­tifi­cates of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance have al­ready been grant­ed and there were en­vi­ron­men­tal and waste man­age­ment plans in place for the en­tire high­way.

On the is­sue of land ac­qui­si­tion and com­pen­sa­tion, Roop­nar­ine said 13 claims have so far been set­tled by NID­CO out of 200 claims from prop­er­ty own­ers will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate by pri­vate treaty. She said the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment en­tails re­lo­ca­tion of 300 house­holds and gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the peo­ple who have to be re­lo­cat­ed are prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed.

"The high­way will be pass­ing through com­mu­ni­ties and will de­stroy tem­ples, church­es, mosques, schools. There­fore we pro­pose to as­sist with re­build­ing the com­mu­ni­ties so as to re­duce the so­cial im­pact on the lives of the cit­i­zens. We have since ac­quired land in Pe­tite Mourne which can be made avail­able to res­i­dents. We are al­so pur­su­ing ag­gres­sive­ly lands to al­low farm­ers and squat­ters to have ac­cess un­der the rel­e­vant poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment."

Speak­ing on oth­er plans for de­vel­op­ment in the new fis­cal year, Roop­nar­ine said an al­ter­na­tive 12-kilo­me­tre ac­cess road from Co­corite to Ch­aguara­mas will be built at a cost of $6 bil­lion while $370 mil­lion will be spent on du­alling Rivulet Road from the Cou­va In­ter­change to the Pt Lisas round­about, as well as con­struc­tion of over­pass ramps at the In­di­an Trail Fly­over.

Oth­er projects in­clude:

• Con­struc­tion of the Va­len­cia by­pass from Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way to the East­ern Main Road around Aripo Sa­van­nah at a cost of $100 mil­lion.

• Con­struc­tion of a ve­hic­u­lar over­pass on the Diego Mar­tin High­way in the vicin­i­ty of Pow­der Mag­a­zine at a cost of $42.6 mil­lion

• Ex­ten­sion of the Diego Mar­tin High­way from Wendy Fitzwilliam Blvd to the Diego Mar­tin Main Road

• Du­alling of the Diego Mar­tin High­way from Vic­to­ria Gar­dens to Ac­ton Court

• Con­struc­tion of walkovers near Movie Towne and Wright­son Road

• Widen­ing of Sad­dle Road

• Widen­ing of the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, Ch­agua­nas

• Re­pair of 630 land­slips

• Re­pair of 92 bridges

• Ex­pan­sion of the traf­fic war­dens pro­gramme