Sascha Wil­son

A pan­dit’s com­plaints about grid­lock traf­fic and the erec­tion of res­i­den­tial apart­ment build­ings op­po­site a mandir at Todd Street, San Fer­nan­do, has caught the at­ten­tion of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi re­spond­ed to Pan­dit Rudranath Ma­haraj dur­ing the un­veil­ing cer­e­mo­ny of a mur­al on the Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, Ma­haraj, who was speak­ing over the week­end at the Kr­ish­na Mandir at Todd Street, com­plained about grid­lock traf­fic in that area and sur­round­ing streets. He al­so took is­sue with plans by the state to build three tow­ers of res­i­den­tial apart­ments op­po­site the mandir.

The pan­dit re­called that sev­er­al years ago, their re­quest to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to have a Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School con­struct­ed at that site met ve­he­ment ob­jec­tions from the state. He said they were told that no school could be built on an area of land less than five acres and that the site was a green zone and no con­struc­tion would be per­mit­ted there.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said last week there were teams sur­vey­ing the land. “And quite sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, with­out any con­sul­ta­tion, with­out any dis­clo­sure, we have been ad­vised by the au­thor­i­ties on our in­quiry that the plan is to build three tow­ers of apart­ments across the road in that green space...I am the biggest sup­port­er of pro­vid­ing hous­ing for our cit­i­zens but I be­lieve in prop­er plan­ning and un­equiv­o­cal­ly, that idea and that plan is very ill-found­ed be­yond any sense of rea­son­able per­sua­sion. There is no in­fra­struc­ture there. There is no room for in­fra­struc­ture there to cater for the 109 apart­ments that are be­ing en­vi­sioned. You are go­ing to put hous­ing in be­tween two schools,” he com­plained.

Dur­ing his ad­dress yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi sought to re­as­sure the pan­dit and res­i­dents of their plans for San Fer­nan­do, in­clud­ing Todd Street.

He said, “From this podi­um, I would like to say to the res­i­dents of Les Ef­forts West in par­tic­u­lar, as I lis­ten to my dear friend and broth­er Pan­dit Ma­haraj speak on the week­end ... de­vel­op­ment of prop­er­ty, co­or­di­na­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, our schools and po­si­tions is along­side traf­fic man­age­ment and I can give the as­sur­ance, as MP for San Fer­nan­do West, all pleas for traf­fic man­age­ment are be­ing co­or­di­nat­ed as we start at phase one at Todd Street re­de­vel­op­ment as it starts from the bot­tom, as it con­nects to the be­gin­ning of the wa­ter­front, that re­mo­bil­i­sa­tion of traf­fic is crit­i­cal for us all.”

The min­is­ter did not speak fur­ther on the mat­ter. (See Page 14)