Thievery Behind Closed Doors?
Land acquisition for public purpose is always beneficial but only if it is done transparently and the values paid are independently verified and at fair market value. Are they ever?
The House of Representatives Order Paper for Wednesday March 22nd 2023, (see attached) has on its agenda to debate and pass thirty one (31) Land Acquisitions in Guaico-Tamana, for the “Churchill Roosevelt Highway extension to Manzanilla Phase 1- Cumuto Junction to Toco Main Road” etc. has been deferred one week until Wednesday 29th, March.
Who are the owners of these properties and what is the cost to the tax payers for this land to be acquired?
Properties en route to Toco, Sangre Grande and Manzanilla have already been identified and are likely being negotiated secretly behind closed doors … just like Kay-Donna. How much did taxpayers pay for Kay-Donna and how many Cabinet members or their families have an interest in properties along this proposed highway route? With thirty-one percent of our citizens below the World Bank’s Poverty Index how do our suffering poor benefit from clandestine land acquisitions? Today there are more potholes and no maintenance of our current major road networks.
What is the rationale for the Churchil Roosevelt Highway Extension? 500M TTD has already been spent on a 5Km highway in 2018 in the middle of a forest from nowhere to nowhere. Five years later, it cannot be used! This highway not only disrupts the southern boundary of the designated environmentally sensitive area, the Aripo Savannas which is home to Environmentally Sensitive Species (ESS) the Ocelot, and other endangered, threatened and endemic plants and animals; it also facilitates the unfettered invasion of privileged land grabbing squatters.
Was there a Highway plan for Sangre Grande or did Minister Sinanan, to use his own words, “get up one morning and say let us go and do this and let us go and do that”? The Valencia bypass already eliminated traffic. Having a highway from 984 feet from the sleepy village of Cumuto, ending 1968 feet from Guaico-Trace, Valencia Stretch which causes a bottleneck in Guaico is not logical when you can simply widen the Valencia stretch at a fraction of the cost. But it seems small expenditures only permits small kickbacks.
While Damocles Sword threatens WASA, and T&TEC’s rates increase, cloaked insiders are benefitting from land acquisition freeness after this Cabinet destroyed the procurement regulations.
Is Trinidad and Tobago a “back-a-yard banana republic” where Cabinet raid the treasury? The forest voted for the axe because the axe handle was made of wood. Our 31% malnourished voiceless wait painfully for medical care, die while waiting for surgery or struggle to feed, clothe and educate their children. Invisible, they are forgotten by complacent Presidents who proclaim without asking the right questions!
