Gail Alexan­der

Re­place­ment beams for the North Stand have been pur­chased and fab­ri­cat­ed and the struc­ture will be com­plet­ed on or be­fore Feb­ru­ary 2. In ad­di­tion, an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to theft of beams from the con­struc­tion site.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall in­dict­ed this at yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting. He was re­ply­ing to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark about re­ports that con­struc­tion of the stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah had been halt­ed due to the theft of beams.

“The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion has ad­vised that the re­place­ment beams have been pur­chased, fab­ri­cat­ed and the North Stand will be com­plet­ed on or be­fore Feb­ru­ary 2, 2023,” Mitchell said.

“An in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion has com­menced as well as a re­port has been made to the po­lice and the po­lice are con­duct­ing in­quiries.”

In re­sponse to ques­tions about the dam­aged 42-inch trans­mis­sion line in San­ta Rosa which was re­cent­ly re­paired, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the re­pairs had proven to be ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing.

He said the dam­age wasn’t due to sab­o­tage but in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed it was caused by river­bank earth shift­ing and move­ment over time.

A rup­ture was dis­cov­ered on Jan­u­ary 19 on the line which trans­mits wa­ter from the North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant in Va­len­cia. The line runs cross-coun­try through Va­len­cia along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way to Pi­ar­co and serves com­mu­ni­ties from Brazil to Mal­abar. An emer­gency WASA re­pair crew was dis­patched to re­pair the rup­tured main to en­sure restora­tion of sup­ply to120,000 cus­tomers.

“The dam­aged sec­tion of pipeline, which was par­tial­ly sub­merged by the Mau­si­ca Riv­er, had to be re­moved and re­placed by a sec­tion of steel main. Dur­ing re­pair works, a ma­son­ry rub­ble wall on the east­ern side of the riv­er col­lapsed on­to the work area fur­ther dis­lodg­ing the 42-inch trans­mis­sion main,” Gon­za­les told the Sen­ate.

“Ad­di­tion­al heavy equip­ment had to be brought to the site to as­sist with the ad­di­tion­al works such as slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion and re­moval of re­in­forced con­crete foot­ing to ac­cess the main. A sec­tion of the re­tain­ing wall and foot­ing had to be re­moved. The foot­ing was made of re­in­forced con­crete and mea­sures about ten feet by six feet by 2.5 feet. The ac­tu­al pipeline re­pair was com­plet­ed, and wa­ter ful­ly re­stored at 8.30 pm. (Tues­day).”

In re­sponse to a ques­tion about COVID 19 deaths, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the min­istry looks at deaths over time and for the past four re­port­ing pe­ri­ods, deaths were one, one, two and one. He said there wasn’t a sus­tain­able trend of in­creas­ing deaths and there hasn’t been any in­crease in that trend over time.

Com­ment­ing on a bul­letin about 11 deaths, Deyals­ingh re­peat­ed that there was no pro­longed in­crease.

“One week doesn’t a trend make,” he said.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pi­lot­ed a sup­ple­men­ta­tion bill for $800 mil­lion for the En­er­gy Min­istry and $15 mil­lion for the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry. The lat­ter in­clud­ed US$282,000 for health plans for staff at T&T’s em­bassies in Wash­ing­ton, Chi­na and else­where.