Loyse Vin­cent

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les spent most of Fri­day vis­it­ing sev­er­al projects through­out To­ba­go East and To­ba­go West, un­der his re­mit.

These projects in­clud­ed the To­ba­go West Waste Treat­ment Plant at SWM­COL and street light­ing projects at Carn­bee and Bethel.

He al­so paid a cour­tesy call on Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis and com­ing out of that meet­ing the min­is­ter said there will be greater “col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the min­istry and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to give more sup­port to farm­ers by drilling a num­ber of wells so that farm­ers can ac­cess wa­ter on a con­sis­tent ba­sis.”

And, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter the is­land’s bad roads will al­so be ad­dressed.

He said, “We agreed to re­vive a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with re­spect to what we have with pot­holes and the leaks that are caus­ing a lot of pot­holes. I was told this morn­ing that there are 2,000 pot­holes or so that came about as a re­sult of leaks so with clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with WASA those are to be ad­dressed in the short­est time pos­si­ble.”

In 2013, then sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Hilton Sandy an­nounced that his Di­vi­sion and WASA “com­mit­ted to work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure To­ba­go’s roads are re­turned to a pris­tine state fol­low­ing pipe main­te­nance works.”

The pro­gramme was, how­ev­er, short-lived as the THA soon re­sumed full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for road main­te­nance on the is­land.

The present Sec­re­tary for Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Set­tle­ments and Ur­ban Re­new­al Clarence Ja­cob said the agree­ment be­tween both par­ties was “not a re­vival but a con­tin­u­a­tion.”

“As you con­struct you will get de­struc­tion, but we are here to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion. To­day is a good day for us be­cause we are not just here to sit in our of­fice and take com­plaints, we are al­so ac­tion­ing the in­ter­ests of our peo­ple,” he said

The long-stand­ing Hills­bor­ough Dam de­silt­ing project which be­gan last year was al­so in­clud­ed on the min­is­ter’s itin­er­ary.

Gon­za­les said, “We ex­pect at the end of this de­silt­ing pro­gramme this dam will have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 to 3 mil­lion gal­lons more wa­ter and with that ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty there are a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ties that are un­der­served and will see an im­proved sup­ply some 20,000 per­sons will see an im­prove­ment in their wa­ter sup­ply.”

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­ba­go West Sham­fa Cud­joe said she was ex­cit­ed by the progress as many of the mat­ters she high­light­ed in her area were dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

“I re­mem­ber vis­it­ing a num­ber of ar­eas late last year and reach­ing out to min­is­ter and res­i­dents got the as­sis­tance they need­ed. Pig­got Trace at Carn­bee, Big Stick Gul­ly at Bethel are just to name a few and to­day is sym­bol­ic of strength­en­ing of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­ba­go East Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy said she too was elat­ed as res­i­dents in her con­stituen­cy ben­e­fit­ed un­der the street light­ing pro­gramme, how­ev­er, she said de­vel­op­ment is a grad­ual process.

“It’s about self-help now com­ing to­geth­er and putting your shoul­der to the wheel and work­ing with the gov­ern­ment to get things done – as I told the res­i­dents of Gru Gru Patch one hand can clap in fact we need all hands on deck,” she said.

She said res­i­dents and the rep­re­sen­ta­tives need­ed to col­lab­o­rate with peo­ple with­in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that mean­ing­ful de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues.