Shas­tri Boodan

Gov­ern­ment will spend $200 mil­lion to com­plete the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba, Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal an­nounced yes­ter­day.The min­is­ter, fea­tured speak­er at a break­fast meet­ing of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce at Sig­na­ture Hall, Ch­agua­nas, said: "We will fin­ish the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. It will cost an­oth­er $200 mil­lion to fin­ish that project. We have asked Min­is­ter Howai to sup­port us to fin­ish this project."

Mooni­lal said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly an­nounced plans for con­struc­tion of a five-star ho­tel, con­ven­tion cen­ter and gov­ern­ment cam­pus near the long-de­layed sta­di­um. He said this will en­sure that cen­tral and south Trinidad are no longer bur­dened with in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Gov­ern­ment will be "mov­ing fast" to re­lo­cate the Port of Port-of-Spain to Sea Lots and an en­er­gy tow­er will be built on the site of the de­mol­ished Sal­va­tori Build­ing for pub­lic and pri­vate en­er­gy en­ter­pris­es.

Faced with a wait­ing list of more than 200,000 ap­pli­cants for low-cost hous­ing, Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment is ac­cel­er­at­ing its hous­ing dri­ve and ex­ist­ing stock in cen­tral Trinidad will be in­creased to in­clude 300 hous­es at Egypt Set­tle­ment, Ch­agua­nas. He said the most im­pres­sive high qual­i­ty hous­es ever built by the pub­lic sec­tor in T&T will be con­struct­ed at that lo­ca­tion.

Re­call­ing the protests that fol­lowed the clear­ing of land for that hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, he said: "There is no de­vel­op­ment with­out con­flict. There can be no de­vel­op­ment with­out con­flict. As a gov­ern­ment we are not scared of con­flict, we are not scared at all. That is why we will com­plete the high­way to Point Fortin."

Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment has faced "rea­son­able con­flict" over de­vel­op­ments in the past. He cit­ed the con­cerns of sci­en­tist who were wor­ried about the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal be­ing built on a fault line, an is­sue he said had been ad­dressed.

The min­is­ter said up­grades are pro­posed at es­tates in cen­tral Trinidad, in­clud­ing two aban­doned hous­ing tow­ers at Ed­in­burgh 500 which had been built by the pre­vi­ous regime at a cost of $140 mil­lion and aban­doned in 2008-2009 be­cause of sev­er­al de­sign flaws. He said new de­signs are be­ing con­sid­ered that in­clude prop­er apart­ments and of­fice space on the low­er floors of the tow­ers.

In ad­di­tion, 700 hous­ing sites will be com­plet­ed for ex-Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed work­ers at Fe­lic­i­ty and 400 acres of lands in Ch­agua­nas once un­der the con­trol of the T&T De­fence Force will be de­vel­oped for busi­ness and in­vest­ment.Mooni­lal said sys­tems are be­ing put in place in the hous­ing sec­tor to weed out shod­dy work­man­ship. He said con­trac­tors were not to blame in all in­stances of shod­dy work since in some in­stances prop­er pub­lic ac­count­ing sys­tems were not in place.

He said new HDC con­trac­tors come in un­der an in-fill pro­gramme for re­fur­bish­ment and mi­nor re­pairs and even­tu­al­ly grad­u­ate to house con­struc­tion when they have met re­quired stan­dards.The min­is­ter al­so said that $75 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed in the 2014/15 bud­get for re­fur­bish­ment and mi­nor re­pairs since many hous­es built by the pre­vi­ous regime had de­fects.

"In Las Al­turas we are not lay­ing the blame at this stage on a par­tic­u­lar con­struc­tion com­pa­ny or a project man­age­ment com­pa­ny. You must have pub­lic sec­tor and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions over­sight. To­day we may be slow. I al­ways tell the min­istry I pre­fer that you are slow and you are cor­rect rather than five years from now I have to ac­count some­where for a build­ing falling down," Mooni­lal said.