Dis­sat­is­fied with bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays hin­der­ing the $4 bil­lion La Brea Dry Dock­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has pledged that a re-elect­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment will es­tab­lish a Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy to ac­cel­er­ate state projects.

At the 2018 sign­ing of a co­op­er­a­tive agree­ment be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had promised the fa­cil­i­ty would pro­vide jobs for re­trenched Petrotrin work­ers. How­ev­er, many are still wait­ing for the 5,000 jobs pledged.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the new La Brea Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and the sod-turn­ing for the La Brea En­hance­ment Project yes­ter­day, Young as­sured that work on the fa­cil­i­ty con­tin­ues, with en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies un­der­way. How­ev­er, he be­lieves the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) is tak­ing too long to is­sue the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance. As a lawyer, he said he con­sid­ers how to re­view and amend the law to bal­ance en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion with na­tion­al progress.

“Let me tell you all what my gov­ern­ment is do­ing. On April 29, I am go­ing to in­tro­duce a Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy with­in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. For too long, things re­main in abeyance. That min­istry will en­sure that when I, as Prime Min­is­ter, say, ‘You see that deep­wa­ter har­bour? I need that done!’ It gets done. It will cut in­ef­fi­cien­cies and break through bu­reau­cra­cy, with­in the con­fines of the law, be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serves bet­ter,” Young said.

Young dis­missed con­cerns that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which he said would re­main in Op­po­si­tion, might ob­struct con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, say­ing the new min­istry would still dri­ve progress.

“The Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy, out of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, with me rid­ing them and them rid­ing every­body else, will get a lot done in that pe­ri­od, so look for­ward to that Trinidad & To­ba­go.”

He al­so hint­ed at an up­com­ing ma­jor project for La Brea but said he could not re­veal the de­tails as dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing. He said this state-of-the-art project does not ex­ist any­where else in the Caribbean and will utilise the har­bour for im­port and ex­port.

“Give me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­liv­er that to La Brea, and I am hop­ing that by the end of the year, I will be back here, turn­ing the sod to put down right here in La Brea a fa­cil­i­ty.”

He warned that oth­er Cari­com lead­ers were try­ing to at­tract the in­vestors but re­as­sured they recog­nised his con­tri­bu­tions to T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor and pre­ferred to in­vest here.

Mean­while, the PNM aims to con­tin­ue rep­re­sent­ing La Brea against UNC and the Joint Trade Union Move­ment’s (JTUM) can­di­date, Clyde El­der.

Young re­mind­ed con­stituents of JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get’s con­tro­ver­sial 2017 re­mark to BP, “Take your rig and go!” This fol­lowed BP’s de­ci­sion not to fab­ri­cate its An­gelin gas plat­form in T&T due to in­dus­tri­al un­rest at TOF­CO.

Young re­fut­ed claims that TOF­CO had con­tin­u­ous work be­fore 2016, stat­ing that fab­ri­ca­tion on­ly re­sumed af­ter the first plat­form’s com­ple­tion.

“You see that sil­ly com­ment, ‘Take your rig and go’, and now they have the au­dac­i­ty to come and present them­selves to the pop­u­la­tion as part of a so­lu­tion for the fu­ture, do not for­get that be­cause I could tell you here La Brea and Trinidad and To­ba­go, T&T took it hard. It just took a lot of con­ver­sa­tions with the top board­room mem­bers and man­age­ment out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in Hous­ton, in Lon­don, in The Hague, in Am­s­ter­dam, ar­gu­ing and ad­vo­cat­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go: give us a chance, bring the world back to La Brea be­cause we know how it af­fects the lives.”

DO­MA boss wel­comes ini­tia­tive

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud has wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy, call­ing it a cru­cial step to­ward ad­dress­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor. He be­lieves the ini­tia­tive an­swers long-stand­ing con­cerns about the in­ad­e­qua­cy of the ser­vice com­mis­sion mod­el.

“The coun­try is hun­gry for new strate­gies, and there is a def­i­nite ap­petite for change,” Aboud stat­ed yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, he stressed that while the min­istry fo­cus­es on state projects, the pri­vate sec­tor faces sim­i­lar chal­lenges that hin­der in­vest­ment and eco­nom­ic growth.

“There are very few new projects in the pri­vate sec­tor, and a com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor in the slow­down of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is the dif­fi­cul­ty in im­ple­men­ta­tion. Many state agen­cies take weeks to re­spond to pri­vate sec­tor en­quiries, sti­fling in­vest­ment,” he ex­plained.

Aboud ar­gued that im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of in­ter­ac­tions be­tween pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies could sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance the eco­nom­ic cli­mate. He point­ed out that past eco­nom­ic booms oc­curred even when oil prices were low, due to a more seam­less busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

He al­so not­ed grow­ing con­cerns with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty about the ease of do­ing busi­ness in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries such as Grena­da, St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos. Even Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don ref­er­enced this is­sue in a re­cent pub­lic speech.

“A cul­tur­al shift is re­quired in pub­lic of­fice to recog­nise the pri­vate sec­tor as an eco­nom­ic en­gine ca­pa­ble of dri­ving growth. Suc­cess should not be seen as a neg­a­tive but as a pos­i­tive out­come for every­one,” Aboud con­clud­ed.