GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Af­ter be­ing housed at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain for the last eight years, Par­lia­ment will be re­turn­ing to the fa­mous Red House in Jan­u­ary.

To­day’s launch of the fi­nal ses­sion of the cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary term will be the last at the Wa­ter­front fa­cil­i­ty.

The fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the Gov­ern­ment’s five-year Par­lia­men­tary term will be launched at 1.30 pm to­day.

The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion has been in charge over the term of this 11th Par­lia­ment. The term con­cludes next Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing which gen­er­al elec­tions will be due.

There will be no cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing - or Pres­i­den­tial speech- to­day. Both the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es of Par­lia­ment will meet in sep­a­rate ar­eas, have a brief ses­sion where the procla­ma­tion launch­ing the ses­sion will be read, and then pro­ceed­ings con­clude. Lead­ers of each House may de­liv­er brief re­marks, of­fi­cials said.

The first or­der of busi­ness in the new ses­sion is Mon­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2020 Bud­get by Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

The venue for pro­ceed­ings is the Par­lia­ment cham­ber at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex.

The Par­lia­ment has been at that lo­ca­tion since 2011 when op­er­a­tions were moved there to al­low ren­o­va­tion and re­fur­bish­ing to be done at the Red House. That was to have been com­plet­ed this year.

In March it was ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed that the Red House would have been com­plet­ed by year-end. There had been spec­u­la­tion Par­lia­ment may have been able to re­turn there last month. But on Au­gust 29, Gov­ern­ment said it would take some time for Par­lia­ment staff and op­er­a­tions to move in­to the Red House and this would be done dur­ing this part of the year.

Af­ter the Christ­mas break, it was pro­ject­ed Par­lia­ment would re­turn to the Red House in Jan­u­ary 2020.

Of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day, Par­lia­ment staff have start­ed “pack­ing up” items for the shift. Fur­ther­ing the com­ple­tion process at the Red House end, the re­cent­ly con­struct­ed sky­walk join­ing the Red House’s west wing on St Vin­cent Street to the west­er­ly Ca­bil­do build­ing is cur­rent­ly be­ing paint­ed in the brick red colour the Red House is known for.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so stat­ed that the cham­bers and floors which cur­rent­ly house the Par­lia­men­tary cham­ber at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, will be con­vert­ed in­to civ­il court­rooms when Par­lia­ment re­turns to the Red House. This would free up the Hall of Jus­tice fa­cil­i­ties for more crim­i­nal courts.

The Par­lia­ment has been us­ing eight floors at the Wa­ter­front. These fa­cil­i­ties which will ac­com­mo­date courts next year in­clude of­fices, rooms, din­ing fa­cil­i­ties, broad­cast­ing rooms, li­brary and gym fa­cil­i­ties, day­care, sick­bay, and oth­er ar­eas.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said this new ses­sion’s fo­cus will be on the 50 plus pieces of leg­is­la­tion.

Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles said, “We look for­ward to the new ses­sion which we know is a pre-po­lit­i­cal ses­sion. We’ll work in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to deal with is­sues of im­por­tance to cit­i­zens. Our fo­cus will be on crime, deal­ing with un­em­ploy­ment and the need for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, the health sec­tor and oth­ers to en­sure Gov­ern­ment is held ac­count­able and where we’ll present our al­ter­na­tive views.”