Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Ten­sion con­tin­ues to mount be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les as a le­gal threat now looms.

In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Trevor James is threat­en­ing to take the Min­istry and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), to court over planned road patch­ing works on the is­land.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, he re­mains un­fazed.

“I see that as a big bluff!! That’s from the same sec­re­tary who now has the THA en­tan­gled in an in­junc­tion em­bar­rass­ment over the con­struc­tion of a ma­jor road. He ob­vi­ous­ly en­joys le­gal em­bar­rass­ment.”

Gon­za­les was re­fer­ring to the in­junc­tion grant­ed by a High Court last Wednes­day on the $70 mil­lion Friend­ship Con­nec­tor road project.

This comes af­ter Gon­za­les an­nounced plans last week dur­ing a vis­it to To­ba­go to com­mence a project to patch roads dug up by WASA across the is­land.

Gon­za­les said the dam­age done to the is­land’s roads dur­ing WASA ’s pipe main­te­nance op­er­a­tions must be ad­dressed and re­paired. But on Thurs­day, in a Face­book live, James ad­vised the min­is­ter and WASA to “cease and de­sist” from fol­low­ing through with the planned re­pairs un­til there is con­sul­ta­tion and in­volve­ment by the THA.

James said he was dis­ap­point­ed that af­ter two years of ask­ing for fund­ing for road works, the Gov­ern­ment had by­passed the THA Act which gives To­ba­go re­spon­si­bil­i­ty over that ju­ris­dic­tion, to start its road patch­ing project.

In re­sponse, Gon­za­les warned James to choose his bat­tles. He asked why the sec­re­tary was against re­pairs and in­sist­ed that he would use all avail­able re­sources and le­gal av­enues to en­sure To­ba­go ben­e­fits from the ser­vices of his min­istry and its sub­sidiary com­pa­nies.

In a re­lease on Fri­day night, the Di­vi­sion again ac­cused Gon­za­les and WASA of ne­glect­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and un­der­min­ing the au­thor­i­ty of the THA. The Di­vi­sion re­mind­ed WASA and the min­is­ter that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for road con­struc­tion, main­te­nance, and re­pair falls un­der the THA’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

“Should the Min­istry and WASA con­tin­ue to pur­sue this il­le­gal arrange­ment, the Di­vi­sion will seek re­dress of the court to legal­ly stop what could on­ly be an at­tempt by the Mis­ter and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to sub­or­di­nate the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and au­thor­i­ty of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

It fur­ther raised con­cern about the state of To­ba­go’s road net­work, at­tribut­ing it to the “care­less op­er­a­tions of WASA” and their fail­ure to co­or­di­nate re­pairs.

The min­is­ter agreed, say­ing roads in To­ba­go are de­plorable so they and WASA must fix the prob­lem.

How­ev­er, the Di­vi­sion in­sist­ed that this is in con­tra­dic­tion with sev­er­al laws, in­clud­ing the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Act, the High­ways Act, and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly 1996 Act.

The Di­vi­sion said it is alarmed at Gon­za­les’ plan to pur­sue “an il­le­gal arrange­ment” rather than fi­nal­is­ing a long-await­ed mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween WASA and the Di­vi­sion to fund “prop­er and re­li­able re­pairs”.