Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says his min­istry and the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions met on Mon­day with nine fam­i­lies in­volved in the Curepe In­ter­change land ac­qui­si­tion and they will fi­nalise ne­go­ti­a­tions by to­mor­row.

“They recog­nise Gov­ern­ment is very fair in treat­ing with them,” Sinanan said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s 2019 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

Sinanan said polic­ing on the roads will al­so no longer re­quire a po­lice of­fi­cer from the first quar­ter of 2019 when the de­mer­it point sys­tem, based on Red Light “Spot Speed” cam­eras, comes in­to play.

“Twen­ty-four-hour sur­veil­lance on the roads for speed­ing mo­torists...” he added.

He said the $10 mil­lion Sea Lots walkover—which has the largest road span at 48 me­tres—will al­so be hand­ed over to Gov­ern­ment soon. How­ev­er, he urged the area’s res­i­dents to use it.

Ten­ders for the Va­len­cia-To­co high­way were al­so eval­u­at­ed yes­ter­day, he said.

Sinanan al­so said the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Ltd with­in his min­istry is be­ing sued by Ver­ti­cal Avi­a­tion LLC for $27 mil­lion for breach of con­tract re­gard­ing a he­li­copter rent­ed by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in May 2015 for US$120,000 a month.

But he said the he­li­copter nev­er came to T&T as it could not be cer­ti­fied in T&T. He said the con­tract was un­der then NHSL gen­er­al man­ag­er Joshie Ma­habir. Ma­habir did not re­spond to calls last evening.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Roodal Mooni­lal con­firmed to the T&T Guardian that there were dif­fi­cul­ties with the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the he­li­copter and it was not de­liv­ered. He added there were le­gal pro­ce­dures in­volved when an item was pur­chased and “for some rea­son, the pur­chase isn’t com­plet­ed.”