Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment would find a way to ter­mi­nate the $300 mil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts re­cent­ly an­nounced for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project. A UNC gov­ern­ment will al­so find the mon­ey to pay pub­lic ser­vants' salary in­creas­es and their back­pay.

"... Nev­er fear, we'll find it," UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said last night on the salary hikes and back­pay owed to pub­lic ser­vants.

Speak­ing at the par­ty's Gen­er­al Elec­tion meet­ing in Barataria, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "I can see it, I can taste it, I can feel it - the UNC will win on April 28!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar slammed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi's re­cent an­nounce­ment about the be­gin­ning of con­struc­tion of high-rise apart­ment build­ings for $300 mil­lion as part of the on­go­ing San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment project.

"In the mid­dle of an elec­tion cam­paign? On the eve of an elec­tion? Three hun­dred mil­lion in con­tracts to build hous­es on the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front?" she said.

"Who are those hous­es for? Who can af­ford that land? That land should be for the peo­ple of T&T for in­dus­tri­al, man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er kinds of de­vel­op­ment. But they want to give $ 300 mil­lion in con­tracts ... Well when we get in there, we'll find a way to ter­mi­nate those con­tracts This is an elec­tion time - don't be hand­ing out this mon­ey!"

She added, "(UNC's) Sad­dam Ho­sein just told you about a restau­rant com­pa­ny build­ing box drains - all kinds of crazy things are hap­pen­ing in these last few weeks. For 10 years they couldn't do any­thing and now it's po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry, bribery and every­thing else you can ever imag­ine."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­tailed her par­ty's plans to make qual­i­ty hous­ing more af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble, in­clud­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty on al­low­ing lawyers to ad­ver­tise, which, she said, could dri­ve down the cost of hir­ing lawyers, in­crease com­pe­ti­tion and as­sist young lawyers.

Al­so planned is a sin­gle um­brel­la en­ti­ty to process ap­provals for land de­vel­op­ment or build­ing con­struc­tion ap­pli­ca­tions.

She said the UNC will al­so rein­vig­o­rate the Land for the Land­less ini­tia­tive and col­lab­o­rate with pri­vate de­vel­op­ers to de­vel­op state lands for sale to cit­i­zens at af­ford­able prices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so slammed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young's re­ply to her promise to have doc­tors vis­it the el­der­ly at homes.

"His an­swer was send­ing more vir­tu­al doc­tors! That's be­cause he's com­ing from a po­si­tion of priv­i­lege! How many grannies, Ajis, Ajas and grand­pas have de­vices and In­ter­net ac­cess and will get this ac­cess to vir­tu­al doc­tors?

"Stu­ar­tie, that will nev­er work as school chil­dren don't even have lap­tops and de­vices! But be­cause we're talk­ing about us­ing doc­tors to help the el­der­ly, he want to come one more than that us­ing vir­tu­al doc­tors!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert's as­sur­ance of no "im­me­di­ate" wa­ter rate in­crease."

"That means it would be 'fire' af­ter elec­tion," she claimed.

Not­ing an­oth­er bank has re­duced their cred­it card lim­it, she added, "We'll try to fix that so they can shop on­line."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "There will be no more Prop­er­ty Tax - prop­er­ty own­ers will save and that al­so means your land­lord will not in­crease your rent be­cause he will no longer have to pay prop­er­ty tax."