Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi has an­nounced the be­gin­ning of the con­struc­tion of high-rise apart­ment build­ings for $300 mil­lion as part of the on­go­ing San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment project.

Al-Rawi vis­it­ed the site on Sat­ur­day with Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of TT (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia, con­trac­tor El­lis Kara­math of Hafeez Kara­math Ltd and oth­er of­fi­cials.

The project, he said, en­tailed the de­vel­op­ment of 120 units in the first phase and 95 units in the sec­ond phase with­in 18 months un­der pri­vate-sec­tor de­vel­op­ment. 

Al-Rawi ex­plained that be­fore this project could have com­menced, they had to un­der­take sev­er­al oth­ers, in­clud­ing coastal de­fence works, widen­ing of roads, in­vest $600 mil­lion in WASA’s wa­ter treat­ment plant, the Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP) de­vel­op­ments, de­mo­li­tion works at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port site, con­struc­tion of the carpark and the in­stal­la­tion of the fish­ing cen­tre. Adding that they have al­so re­lo­cat­ed and com­pen­sat­ed squat­ters, he said, “This is very much an ac­tive zone of con­struc­tion from Skin­ner Park all the way up to Mara­bel­la Train­line at Guaracara Riv­er which is where the oth­er de­vel­op­ment is, it rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.67 bil­lion of in­vest­ment which al­lows for thou­sands of jobs in con­struc­tion and thou­sands of jobs af­ter con­struc­tion.”

He said the de­vel­op­ment mir­rors that of Movi­eTowne in Port-of-Spain.

“This is the on­ly way to es­cape the pover­ty of squat­ting, the re­place­ment of jobs away from URP, Cepep and Forestry in­to ma­rine fa­cil­i­ties, in­to fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties, in­to hous­ing and con­struc­tion and this rep­re­sents there­fore the cul­mi­na­tion of 50 years of ole talk com­ing in­to ac­tu­al hard ground re­al­i­ty.”   

As for the Em­ba­cadere land­fill, Al-Rawi said it would be closed and con­vert­ed in­to a re­cy­cling area.

Ude­cott is the over­all im­ple­men­ta­tion agency and de­vel­op­er of the Mas­ter Plan for the Re­de­vel­op­ment Project which, Al-Rawi said, com­pris­es 31 projects which are be­ing un­der­tak­en in four phas­es.

On Sat­ur­day, Al-Rawi and the oth­er of­fi­cials ac­com­pa­nied Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to the new $35 mil­lion San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Cen­tre, lo­cat­ed near­by, for the of­fi­cial hand­ing over of the fa­cil­i­ty to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries.