Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to halt pro­cess­ing of claims for lands ac­quired along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion Project to Point Fortin. He said Gov­ern­ment was be­ing asked to pay up to $90 mil­lion for a par­cel of land.

Sinanan was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from a res­i­dent of Mon De­sir at Thurs­day night’s Con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Pa­lo Seco Pri­ma­ry School. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley did not at­tend the ses­sion be­cause he was in­volved in an emer­gency Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment video-con­fer­ence called to dis­cuss the cri­sis in Venezuela, so oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters field­ed ques­tions from the au­di­ence.

One au­di­ence mem­ber, who did not give his name, said a por­tion of the high­way pass­es through Mon De­sir where res­i­dents’ lands have been ac­quired. He said al­though claims for com­pen­sa­tion have been sent to Nid­co, they have not been paid.

Sinanan said that when the project be­gan in 2010 un­der the PNM, $400 mil­lion was bud­get­ed for land ac­qui­si­tion. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment changed, and the ac­qui­si­tion bud­get rose to $800 mil­lion. On re­turn­ing to of­fice in 2015, the PNM gov­ern­ment found that 50 per cent of the land need­ed had been ac­quired, leav­ing close to 400 parcels out­stand­ing with close to $600 mil­lion al­ready spent.

“We found that where a piece was need­ed, an en­tire block was bought, so this gov­ern­ment had to go in­to most of these plots and iden­ti­fy what re­al­ly went on there. It took us a while to eval­u­ate the process,” he said.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that the process for land ac­qui­si­tion hap­pened in the way it did. They used a com­bi­na­tion of com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion and pri­vate treaty with no def­i­nite plan as to how they were go­ing to ac­quire the land. We have some val­u­a­tions as much as $90 mil­lion for a par­cel of land and these are things we are try­ing to un­rav­el.”

Sinanan said Nid­co and the Min­istry of Works had pre­pared a re­port that will be tak­en to Cab­i­net in two weeks, fol­low­ing which a de­ci­sion will be made on the land ac­qui­si­tions. He said that when the facts come out, it will be mind-blow­ing.

La Brea res­i­dents at the meet­ing called for pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for jobs when con­struc­tion of the pro­posed dry-dock fa­cil­i­ty be­gins lat­er this year. One res­i­dent said it should tem­porar­i­ly off­set un­em­ploy­ment caused by the clo­sure of Petrotrin.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the time of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning it has been PNM pol­i­cy to in­dus­tri­alise the south-west­ern penin­su­la and in do­ing so, source labour from those com­mu­ni­ties. How­ev­er, he ad­vised res­i­dents to up­grade their train­ing as skilled labour would be need­ed for the up­com­ing projects.

Re­spond­ing to res­i­dents’ ap­peals for an ad­e­quate sup­ply of pipe borne wa­ter, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte said wa­ter pro­duc­tion had dropped in Pa­lo Seco and San­ta Flo­ra over the years. He said when WASA was spend­ing mon­ey on in­fra­struc­ture five years ago, the com­mu­ni­ties were left out, but there are three wells in the area WASA will be work­ing on to get pro­duc­tion in­creased by March.