Lay­ing his man­age­ment plan in the first part of his two-part ad­dress to the na­tion last evening, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plan for the coun­try would cost tax­pay­ers $12.5 bil­lion—less than half of what his pre­de­ces­sors wast­ed. The $29 bil­lion in wast­ed funds, he in­di­cat­ed, was cold hard cash which was on hand and this fig­ure ex­clud­ed oth­er forms of ex­pen­di­tures.

With­in his plan in­clud­ed ex­pen­di­ture on projects such as $2 bil­lion on re­pairs at the Port-of- Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, cre­at­ing a La Brea dry dock, and on hous­ing pro­grammes re­spec­tive­ly.

He al­so planned a $1 bil­lion ex­pen­di­ture on the Drag­on gas pipeline, re­sort tourism project, the To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal, pur­chase of two new fer­ries for To­ba­go, and the San Fer­nan­do wa­ter­front project re­spec­tive­ly.

Row­ley al­so put forth ex­pen­di­tures of $850 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal and $600 mil­lion for the pur­chase of two Coast Guard ves­sels.

“Look at the things that have not been done in Trinidad and To­ba­go and which now fall for this gov­ern­ment to do,” he said “and if we had ac­cess to this kind of cash, or to bor­row against it look what we could have done (point­ing at his list­ed projects and plans).”

Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal

In 2009, the main tow­er in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal was as­sessed by en­gi­neers to be struc­tural­ly un­sound and fol­low­ing last Au­gust’s 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake which shook the coun­try. The Gov­ern­ment was forced to evac­u­ate the tow­er in or­der to tear it down and re­build it. “If we had built that, and that was deemed a pri­or­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2009—it is now be­ing ad­dressed,” he said.

La Brea Dry Dock

Row­ley said this project is be­ing done to cap­i­talise on the coun­try’s ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty to the Pana­ma Canal so that ships that are tra­vers­ing the At­lantic to the Pa­cif­ic through Pana­ma could get ser­viced in T&T, cre­at­ing jobs and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change in­come. “The Chi­nese are of­fer­ing to come in with us. They will take up 30 per cent, we would have to be good for 70 per cent,” he said.

To­ba­go

“For the last 36 months in this coun­try, the con­ver­sa­tion, the biggest scan­dal in my Gov­ern­ment ac­cord­ing to some peo­ple is the fer­ry, the fer­ry, the fer­ry, the fer­ry,” Row­ley said.

He said the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion mis­man­aged the two used fer­ries which pre­vi­ous­ly ser­viced the in­ter-is­land sea bridge, “run­ning them in­to the ground.” He blamed the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion for now forc­ing them to have to pur­chase two new fer­ries to help ser­vice the sea bridge. Row­ley al­so blamed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and naysay­ers for deny­ing To­ba­go a San­dals re­sort which they would have con­struct­ed to help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and bring in much-need­ed tourists.

The To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal, Row­ley said, was nec­es­sary to bring the is­land’s tourism in­to mod­ern times. “As it stands now if a jum­bo jet lands in To­ba­go and starts to of­fload or is load­ing, peo­ple are out in the carpark wait­ing to get on the plane and if it’s rain­ing, you can’t get off the plane in­to the air­port—that is not how you do tourism in 2019. We need a prop­er air­port ter­mi­nal and we do­ing that now,” he said.

San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project

The Prime Min­is­ter said this project is nec­es­sary to boost the city’s econ­o­my as, “San Fer­nan­do is the on­ly wa­ter­front city in the Caribbean and pos­si­bly the world where the wa­ter­front is a dump.”