JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) says there is noth­ing im­prop­er about the work be­ing car­ried out at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to ac­com­mo­date this year’s In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade.

In a me­dia re­lease, the EMA said it had in­ves­ti­gat­ed pub­lic con­cerns and found no breach of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to the tem­po­rary pa­rade square or the in­stal­la­tion of three Bai­ley bridges.

“Dur­ing the site vis­it, the EMA ob­served two tem­po­rary ramps built over box drains, as well as a tem­po­rary stage with a fence around its perime­ter. A met­al ramp is cov­er­ing the box drain, and a grav­el-sand mix has been tem­porar­i­ly placed on ei­ther side,” the au­thor­i­ty stat­ed.

The EMA’s re­sponse came af­ter Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of the work.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that the on­ly paving un­der­tak­en was to fa­cil­i­tate the in­stal­la­tion of three Bai­ley bridges, pro­vid­ing ac­cess for dig­ni­taries’ ve­hi­cles as well as equip­ment op­er­at­ed by the De­fence Force’s En­gi­neer­ing Bat­tal­ion.

In a two-minute, 20-sec­ond video post­ed on In­sta­gram, Aboud ac­cused the State of break­ing the law and us­ing mem­bers of the De­fence Force to do so.

“What is the cost? And who au­tho­rised the work? Does it have Town and Coun­try ap­proval? En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty ap­proval? Is there any her­itage as­sess­ment? This is a 230-acre par­cel of land that is owned by the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah does not be­long to this Gov­ern­ment,” Aboud said.

He added: “When you come in­to of­fice and de­cide you’re go­ing to spend $10 mil­lion on a paved par­adise and put up a car park, we say no, no, no. It’s not yours. It’s il­le­gal. You’re us­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel to com­mit an il­le­gal­i­ty against the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We will re­mem­ber. We will re­mem­ber the mil­lions of dol­lars spent and wast­ed.”

Aboud al­so ref­er­enced re­cent com­ments by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der, who main­tained that the works were tem­po­rary, a po­si­tion lat­er re­in­forced by the EMA.

“No paving or caulk­ing has been done. No ex­ca­va­tion works were ob­served. All works ap­pear to be of a tem­po­rary na­ture. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) Des­ig­nat­ed Ac­tiv­i­ties 8 and 9. The work be­ing con­duct­ed is not in breach of any of the EMA’s reg­u­la­tions,” the au­thor­i­ty stat­ed.

The re­lease came as mem­bers of the De­fence Force con­duct­ed their first re­hearsal for the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade yes­ter­day, amid con­tin­ued crit­i­cism from op­po­nents who ar­gue that the works amount to a des­e­cra­tion of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Among those op­pos­ing the project are for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young and ac­tivist Den­nise Dem­ming.

In a Face­book post, Young, the Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West MP, crit­i­cised the re­lo­ca­tion of the pa­rade square from the Grand Stand area to a site op­po­site Pres­i­dent’s House.

“Con­stituents at­tempt­ing to leave Cas­cade, St Ann’s and Bel­mont faced chaot­ic grid­lock traf­fic this morn­ing be­cause of the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s dis­as­trous plans to move the In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade to a lo­ca­tion op­po­site Pres­i­dent’s House,” Young wrote.

He al­so ques­tioned if Gov­ern­ment ad­e­quate­ly con­sid­ered the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of the works.

“Add to that chaos their de­struc­tion of our beloved Sa­van­nah with the paving, etc. Did Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC en­sure that the Sa­van­nah’s im­por­tant aquifers are not be­ing pol­lut­ed by the paving ma­te­ri­als and their dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals, which seep in­to the ground? Who is win­ning?”

Dem­ming al­so crit­i­cised the works in a video post­ed on Face­book, ques­tion­ing why le­gal ac­tion had not been tak­en to pro­tect the coun­try’s green spaces.

“If this was a PNM con­struc­tion, the UNC lawyers would have come out and stopped it. So what has hap­pened with the PNM lawyers? Why haven’t they stopped this? Is it that the Gov­ern­ment is right in do­ing it? Is it that they don’t care? What is it?” she asked.

While the pa­rade square has been re­lo­cat­ed to op­po­site Pres­i­dent’s House, the pa­rade route through Port-of-Spain re­mains un­changed.