KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Af­ter six days of protests out­side the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice in St Clair, en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist and leader of the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM) Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh will, this morn­ing, meet with Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at Pres­i­dent's House, Port-of-Spain.Kublals­ingh made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, even as his move­ment con­tin­ued its protest ac­tion out­side the OPM against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He said the group was hop­ing to raise with Car­mona their con­cerns about the ef­fect of the con­struc­tion of the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the Point Fortin high­way on the en­vi­ron­ment and the res­i­dents. The meet­ing is sched­uled to start at 8.30 am.Kublals­ingh said, how­ev­er, that the group would con­tin­ue to protest un­til their is­sues have been ad­dressed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar."It has been a long process. We start­ed this process in 2005 but the Chi­nese have a say­ing, drip by drip by drip ..." he said.

He said in ad­di­tion to his meet­ing with Car­mona, he would be meet­ing with civic groups and oth­er po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to gar­ner sup­port.Yes­ter­day, the group held plac­ards and shout­ed chants di­rect­ed at the PM as they demon­strat­ed un­der the watch­ful eyes of po­lice of­fi­cers."Obey re­port," and "Do your du­ty," were the in­struc­tions shout­ed by pro­test­ers as they marched in cir­cles op­po­site the of­fice on Gray Street.

Af­ter a 21-day hunger strike last year out­side the Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fice, Kublals­ingh's group was promised that an in­de­pen­dent re­view would be con­duct­ed, head­ed by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong.The re­sult of that re­view was a re­port which showed neg­a­tive ef­fects to the con­struc­tion of the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin, es­ti­mat­ed to cost $7.2 bil­lion.

Kublals­ingh, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said their lat­est protest was to get Per­sad-Bisses­sar to an­swer two ques­tions."First­ly, is she go­ing to abide by the find­ings of the Arm­strong re­port and sec­ond­ly, is she go­ing to await the court de­ci­sion with re­spect to Debe and Mon De­sir?"The group's lat­est ac­tion was sparked af­ter Nid­co an­nounced last week that it in­tend­ed to go ahead with the dis­put­ed Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way de­spite the fact that the mat­ter was be­fore the court.

Kublals­ingh was told by po­lice on Mon­day that if he were to go with plac­ards and dis­trib­ute in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day he could be ar­rest­ed. But al­though the pro­test­ers were ap­proached by po­lice yes­ter­day and told that they were vi­o­lat­ing the law, no ar­rests were made."We told them that if we were vi­o­lat­ing the law, then they were free to car­ry out their du­ty," Kublals­ingh told the me­dia of the po­lice's pres­ence and lack of ac­tion against them yes­ter­day.

Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah al­so vis­it­ed the protest site yes­ter­day and stood "in sol­i­dar­i­ty" with Kublals­ingh. He said he had dis­agreed with the con­struc­tion of the high­way from the start.Ab­du­lah al­so said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had "ma­m­aguyed" the pop­u­la­tion with the Arm­strong re­port."To ig­nore the find­ings (of the Arm­strong re­port) is a demon­stra­tion of woe­ful­ly bad gov­er­nance. To ig­nore these find­ings would be tan­ta­mount to ma­m­aguy­ing the peo­ple," he said.

He said it seemed the mat­ter of set­ting up the com­mit­tee was sim­ply a pub­lic re­la­tions strat­e­gy to get Kublals­ingh to end his hunger strike last year.One mem­ber of the HRM, Ku­mar Sam­lal, stat­ed his in­ten­tion yes­ter­day to set up a camp at Gopee Trace in Mon De­sir from to­day, to mon­i­tor equip­ment that had been trans­port­ed to the area.