Kevon Felmine

Mem­bers of the High­way Re-route Move­ment are plan­ning to form a hu­man bar­ri­cades in front of bull­doz­ers and oth­er heavy equip­ment as they ac­cel­er­ate ef­forts to stop work on the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of Point Fortin high­way.How­ev­er, Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has warned that the group could be found in con­tempt of court if they con­tin­ue their protests.Ten­sions have been es­ca­lat­ing at the dis­put­ed site over the past few days af­ter re­ports that work is set to re­sume on the high­way ex­ten­sion. Over the week­end, HRM mem­bers con­verged on an Con­stru­to­ra OAS site of­fice on the Mon De­sir Road and threat­ened to form a hu­man bar­ri­cade in front of bull­doz­ers if work­er at­tempt­ed to en­ter the dis­put­ed are."I am old al­ready, I ready to die," res­i­dent Mo­han Baney told se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials at the OAS site af­ter giv­ing them an ear­ful about the prob­lems he and oth­er res­i­dents faced as a re­sult of the­high­way con­struc­tion.

Baney said while they sup­port con­struc­tion of the high­way, the dis­put­ed seg­ment is un­nec­es­sary.HRM leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh said the group will re­main at the camp to en­sure that no progress is made on the dis­put­ed seg­ment."What we have here is ac­tion on the ground...There is a vig­il in Port-of-Spain and we es­tab­lished a vig­il to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ties here at the Debe to Mon De­sir leg, specif­i­cal­ly the Mon De­sir In­ter­change. The peo­ple have de­cid­ed to move. They spoke pas­sion­ate­ly and quite ve­he­ment­ly, ex­plain­ing their own in­ter­est to the se­cu­ri­ty here at the OAS camp," he said. "They ba­si­cal­ly told the work­ers here that they are not go­ing to al­low them to move the trac­tors to go on­to the lands and that is their po­si­tion."Asked how they planned to stop the work, Kublals­ingh said: "It is up to the peo­ple but I be­lieve they have threat­ened to for a hu­man chain in front of the trac­tors and we will see how they work."

Kublals­ingh re­peat­ed his call to the Gov­ern­ment to abide by the Arm­strong re­port. Mooni­lal warned that the HRM could be risk­ing con­tempt charges with their cur­rent ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause the mat­ter is be­fore the courts.On Fri­day, Jus­tice James Aboud, pre­sid­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice, de­ferred hear­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions made by the HRM to have the dis­put­ed leg stopped to Oc­to­ber 18 to al­low the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the State more time to sub­mit doc­u­ments to the court.A re­lat­ed law­suit over the con­struc­tion of the $7 bil­lion project is sched­uled to be heard be­fore the same judge on Oc­to­ber 28. The HRM is seek­ing a con­ser­va­to­ry or­der stop­ping con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion of the high­way. The group is al­so seek­ing to amend its sub­stan­tive case to ten­der fresh ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing a re­port from a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee which ex­am­ined the high­way project.

Speak­ing dur­ing a walk­a­bout in his con­stituen­cy to as­sess ur­gent in­fra­struc­tur­al work, Mooni­lal said the court re­fused to or­der a halt to the work, so the HRM's protests at the work site are il­le­gal.He said the court re­fused an in­ter­im or­der for in­junc­tive re­lief mean­ing it re­fused to stop the con­struc­tion."I am hop­ing that Mr Kublals­ingh and oth­ers will obey the de­ci­sion of the court," he said."There is a sub­stan­tive mat­ter in the court in­volv­ing that. That mat­ter con­tin­ues to be heard, but they need to have re­spect for the court be­cause if he tries to stop the high­way now when the court has ruled, I think he will be in con­tempt on court."Pro­ceed­ings could be brought against him for con­tempt of an or­der of the court so he has to be very care­ful about that."

Mooni­lal said so far, 100,000 peo­ple have used and ben­e­fit­ed from the high­way and it would be un­fair for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in the south-west re­gion in Trinidad to be left out.

"The Gol­con­da to Debe leg of the high­way has opened and 100,000 peo­ple or so have passed on that road, ben­e­fit­ed from it and they have seen the val­ue of it and we just in­tend to con­tin­ue," he said.