Government MP Dr Keith Rowley says the law should be amended to allow the Tobago House of Assembly to be responsible for land acquisition on the island and not the Central Government. He said, based on the Vision 20/20 National Development Plan, people in their own communities should have more control over their environment. Rowley also called on Government to take quick action to acquire land to complete construction of the Diego Martin Highway. Rowley made the call while speaking in the House of Representatives debate on a land acquisition motion in the name of Agriculture, Lands and Marine resources Minister Arnold Piggott.

Some 15 parcels of land are being acquired under the motion for certain government projects. Rowley said major traffic jams are caused each afternoon for motorists entering the Diego Martin area because the highway project was not completed. “There is a traffic jam that sometimes snakes all the way back to Woodbrook,” Rowley added. He said that was because of the incomplete northbound lane of the highway between Victoria Gardens and Crystal Stream. He said the Diego Martin Main Road was being used as the northbound lane and because of a mall in the vicinity, there is a “slowing and stopping of traffic, which backs up all the way into Woodbrook.”
He said that problem was getting worse by the hour.

He said he could not understand why “this piece of work was not being done to bring relief to all the people who suffer there every single evening.” Rowley said the drawings for the design of the highway “sits, already completed, in Imbert’s office.”Rowley called on Colm Imbert, Minister of Works, to move to acquire the parcels of land to ensure work on the project is completed. Meanwhile, Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj wants the Government to state whether the relatives of a former PNM executive officer was the only owners paid for acquired lands in Tobago. Maharaj said they were paid $4 million. He wanted to know if that represented a percentage of the cost of the land or the full payment. He also wanted Piggott to say whether other owners had been paid for the acquisition of their lands and how much was paid to them.