JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, an­nounced last year af­ter the Bud­get, is “se­ri­ous­ly on­go­ing.”

The ex­pan­sive de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme was un­veiled in No­vem­ber, a month af­ter the Bud­get was pre­sent­ed. At the time, the Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed that work on some projects could be­gin by Au­gust this year.

Asked about the plans in Au­gust, John said they were “still in pro­cure­ment stage.” She added that progress was be­ing made and de­scribed the process as hav­ing achieved sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones.

On Tues­day, char­tered sur­vey­or and for­mer Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try pres­i­dent, Afra Ray­mond, said he had no­ticed a pat­tern of the Gov­ern­ment leav­ing ma­jor plans out of Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions to avoid scruti­ny.

Ray­mond, one of the lob­by­ists for the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, which was re­cent­ly amend­ed, said, “So, you could have a whole bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13 (2025) and men­tion not one word about those mas­sive projects. But three weeks lat­er, on No­vem­ber 6, it could be a song and a dance? The on­ly rea­son to leave that out, be­cause it couldn’t be that you didn’t have it, or that it wasn’t in your con­cep­tion on Oc­to­ber 13, that’s not pos­si­ble. The on­ly rea­son to leave it out is to avoid scruti­ny and avoid dis­cus­sion.”

In Ju­ly, John said the ini­tia­tive had en­tered the sec­ond stage of the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) process, and that the Gov­ern­ment hoped to be­gin award­ing con­tracts by Sep­tem­ber or Oc­to­ber. At the time, she said the blue­print had at­tract­ed 965 re­spons­es from po­ten­tial in­vestors and de­vel­op­ers around the world.

Be­fore a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Tues­day, John was asked for an up­date out­side Par­lia­ment. She said the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed to fi­nalise some of the projects iden­ti­fied un­der the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plans with­in a month.

“We are out of pro­cure­ment. Some of the re­quests for pro­pos­als are now in. So hope­ful­ly, that, and it’s with the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). So hope­ful­ly they will be fi­nal­is­ing some of those things with­in the month or so.”

Asked about some of the com­pa­nies that had ex­pressed in­ter­est, John said she was not sup­posed to know that in­for­ma­tion.

“I am not sup­posed to know that. You self, come on. You want to re­port a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.”

The pro­gramme was ex­pand­ed to about 120 projects and was es­ti­mat­ed to gen­er­ate about 72,000 jobs at its peak across sec­tors in­clud­ing con­struc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, tourism and fi­nance.

When Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­veiled the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, she said it aimed to trans­form in­fra­struc­ture, at­tract pri­vate in­vest­ment and gen­er­ate at least 50,919 jobs.

The plans in­clude ma­jor re­de­vel­op­ment projects in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Ga­le­o­ta and In­vaders Bay, as well as pro­pos­als to over­haul the coun­try’s prison in­fra­struc­ture.

Among the flag­ship pro­pos­als are con­vert­ing the Car­rera Is­land Prison in­to a 75-room bou­tique re­sort and trans­form­ing the Port-of -Spain Prison in­to an ex­hi­bi­tion and events fa­cil­i­ty with cre­ative spaces, class­rooms and a rooftop restau­rant.

Last month, about 50 in­mates from the prison’s pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 500 were re­moved from the Port-of-Spain Prison as part of plans to re­lo­cate the fa­cil­i­ty out­side the city and pre­pare the site for the pro­posed re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion works.