Charles Kong Soo

Se­nior Re­porter

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens will pay the full cost of the Diego Mar­tin Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said First Cit­i­zens pro­posed to fi­nance the con­struc­tion of the en­tire 30,00 square feet build­ing at a cost be­tween $40-45 mil­lion di­vid­ed in­to two –First Cit­i­zens in the South end and the Diego Mar­tin head­quar­ters on the north­ern side.

He was speak­ing at the open­ing of the Diego Mar­tin Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, at Ken Val­ley Dri­ve, Diego Mar­tin, yes­ter­day.

This fa­cil­i­ty, said Im­bert, would be fi­nanced with­out a gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee.

Im­bert said that First Cit­i­zens was es­sen­tial­ly rent­ing the south­ern part of the build­ing for 20 years which would be suf­fi­cient to re­pay the loan.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life has come to Diego Mar­tin and is in store for the rest of the coun­try.

“To­day I speak as the voice of change be­cause change has come to Diego Mar­tin and it will come to the rest of the coun­try.

“In a mat­ter of weeks, I hope NID­CO will tell me that the road con­nec­tion be­tween the East/West artery and the North/South artery where we have been work­ing on for the last two and a half years or more has been dis­turbed by COVID.

“But we’re al­most close to com­ple­tion of the smooth and safe in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the ar­ter­ies of the West­ern Main Road and the Diego Mar­tin High­way.

“When that is com­plete, it will be the most mod­ern road in­fra­struc­ture in an ur­ban area in T&T,” he said.

He said he looked for­ward to a sim­i­lar func­tion in Siparia when the peo­ple of Siparia through their ex­ec­u­tive at the cor­po­ra­tion do what Diego Mar­tin did in vot­ing in sup­port of chang­ing their sta­tus from a cor­po­ra­tion to a bor­ough.

Row­ley said that they too can ex­pect an im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of life in their neigh­bour­hoods.

He said this was where burgess­es will have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and elect re­spon­si­ble peo­ple.

PM ad­vances agen­da for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form

Row­ley said he has had to lis­ten to de­trac­tors on many oc­ca­sions say­ing that the rea­son why Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment had be­come ob­so­lete and the re­form had not be­come a re­al­i­ty was that the PNM Gov­ern­ment did not want to give up con­trol.

He said, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment worked and cre­at­ed a struc­ture in­to which they put that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, au­thor­i­ty, and con­trol to fa­cil­i­tate lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form. The re­form, he said, brings greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at the dis­trict lev­el so that they can con­trol the fis­cal, ad­min­is­tra­tive, and man­age­ment arrange­ments. He de­scribed it as a “de­vo­lu­tion of au­thor­i­ty.”

Row­ley said what cur­rent­ly passed for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was a sham, and what was need­ed was to change sev­er­al things first.

He said this will en­tail bring­ing new man­age­ment arrange­ments, and an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart in the cor­po­ra­tion filled with var­i­ous posts, such as of­fi­cers with cer­tain skills from town and coun­try, en­gi­neer­ing, and so­cial ser­vices to se­cu­ri­ty.

Row­ley said all these things will pro­vide a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for the peo­ple who live with­in the bor­oughs or cor­po­ra­tions.

Com­ment­ing on prop­er­ty tax as a form of rev­enue, the PM said small pay­ments by a lot of peo­ple will pro­vide mon­ey to sup­port im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of life for peo­ple every­where in T&T.

Dr Row­ley will host a press con­fer­ence to­mor­row at 10.30 am at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.