Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John, has con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing sup­ple­men­tal ap­pro­pri­a­tions to com­plete over 100 ap­proved in­fra­struc­ture projects, with a sig­nif­i­cant fo­cus on flood mit­i­ga­tion ini­tia­tives.

These projects, which en­com­pass road­works, drainage sys­tems, and flood con­trol mea­sures, are deemed crit­i­cal for en­hanc­ing the na­tion’s re­silience against sea­son­al flood­ing and im­prov­ing over­all in­fra­struc­ture. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, John said the sup­ple­men­tal ap­pro­pri­a­tions are es­sen­tial to ad­dress fund­ing gaps that have hin­dered the time­ly com­ple­tion of these projects.

She not­ed that many of the ini­tia­tives are al­ready in progress but re­quire ad­di­tion­al re­sources to reach com­ple­tion.  The pro­posed fund­ing will en­sure that these projects are fi­nalised and can de­liv­er the in­tend­ed ben­e­fits to com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. 

“We are look­ing for­ward for enough mon­ey to help with the al­le­vi­a­tion of flood­ing. The Cab­i­net would have ap­proved 114 projects, and I am grate­ful these are not nec­es­sar­i­ly large projects; with­in the con­text of projects, they are fair­ly small, but they go in­to the com­mu­ni­ties and clean drains and rivers, and so on, and that will help sig­nif­i­cant­ly.”

Among the key projects iden­ti­fied for com­ple­tion are sev­er­al flood mit­i­ga­tion works aimed at re­duc­ing the im­pact of rain on vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing those in her con­stituen­cy of Cou­va North.

“We are go­ing to go at it again with re­spect to clean­ing drains, par­tic­u­lar­ly the riv­er mouths, be­cause I mean, if the wa­ter has nowhere to go be­cause the riv­er is not emp­ty­ing in­to the sea, then we will peren­ni­al­ly have the same prob­lem.” 

Mean­while, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee claimed he in­her­it­ed a min­istry in need of fi­nan­cial re­sources to pre­vent the dis­rup­tion of op­er­a­tions.

“What we saw when we went in two weeks ago was re­al­ly a telling sign where the last ad­min­is­tra­tion lit­er­al­ly spent out every­thing. We are ask­ing for a sup­ple­men­tal ap­pro­pri­a­tion to con­tin­ue some of the work that was un­der­fund­ed, some of the works that need fund­ing, and to car­ry through the new Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the new bud­get is pre­sent­ed.” 

Lee stat­ed that steps were al­ready be­ing tak­en to ac­cess fund­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly so as to not put ad­di­tion­al strain on the coun­try’s cof­fers for hous­ing projects.

“We have to be cre­ative. I have reached out to in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like the World Bank and the IDB (In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Bank). Those meet­ings have been very pos­i­tive to get fund­ing for 2025 / 2026 al­lo­ca­tion that would not im­pact on the bal­ance sheet of the Gov­ern­ment.”

Lee said he was ea­ger to get the min­istry fi­nances sort­ed out.

“What we are try­ing to do now is just try and main­tain what this last ad­min­is­tra­tion start­ed, some hous­es that need to be com­plet­ed, to be able to hand out. Right now, there are a lot of projects go­ing on in HDC so there are no hous­es at present­ly to give out be­cause of the ter­ri­ble job the last ad­min­is­tra­tion did in the Min­istry of Hous­ing.”