Gail Alexan­der

The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) will spear­head the con­struc­tion of the long-await­ed Rox­bor­ough Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orvil­lle Lon­don said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at Co­co Reef Ho­tel in To­ba­go, Lon­don out­lined plans for To­ba­go, ap­proved by Cab­i­net, in­clud­ing for­ma­tion of a land­bank, im­prove­ments to the con­tro­ver­sial Land Ac­qui­si­tion sit­u­a­tion and ac­qui­si­tion of cer­tain To­ba­go es­tates for hous­ing.

Lon­don said the cost of the Rox­bor­ough com­plex has not yet been de­ter­mined. The com­plex will house of­fices for THA and the Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices Di­vi­sion. Nipdec al­so will spear­head a project to link the Store Bay Lo­cal Road with the Claude Noel High­way. An ex­ten­sion of the lat­ter to Char­lottesville was pro­ject­ed on a phased plan. On the land ac­qui­si­tion is­sue which peo­ple in T&T have com­plained about, in­clud­ing late pay­ments for this, Lon­don said Cab­i­net was up­date on mat­ters from as far back as 30 years.

He said a pack­age of land ac­qui­si­tion leg­is­la­tion would be brought to Par­lia­ment for up­grade to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion. Lon­don said prob­lems stemmed from peo­ple not ap­ply­ing for pay­ment or no claims be­ing made or when own­ers could not be iden­ti­fied. He said the up­grad­ed leg­is­la­tion would make it pos­si­ble for To­bag­o­ni­ans to get mort­gages and en­able them to be bet­ter able to de­mand pay­ment from the state when mon­ey was owed to them. THA al­so plans ac­quir­ing 40 acres of the well known Friend­ship Es­tate for hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and recre­ation projects. Plans al­so are in the works to ac­quire WASA lands at Low­lands, he said.