Back to the drawing board

ANOTHER disappointing disclosure which emerged during the Parliament’s consideration of the fine print of budget 2020 is the fact that a key plan to access a $1 billion loan to fight flooding in Port of Spain was scuttled when a prerequisite study was deemed not up to scratch.

“There was a loan of US$135 million, which is almost a billion, and the drawdown would have started in 2015 to pay the staff to do the study,” said Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan this week. “The study failed because after it was presented, the IDB indicated that study and proposal would not solve the problem of flooding in downtown Port of Spain.”

The minister did not give further details, but the timing of his disclosure could not have been more fortuitous. As he spoke, heavy rainfall drenched the capital with the resulting water rendering several key roadways inaccessible as if to prove a point about the need for this project. The message sent is that flooding is just something citizens will have to get used to for the time being.

We hope the two pumps which, also fortuitously, were commissioned this week make a dent in the situation. There is a need to provide relief to motorists, the business community and members of the public as a whole.

Flooding damages our infrastructure and results in greater costs down the road. But it also eats into productivity: dissuading people from doing business in the capital if there are rain clouds on the horizon, interrupting the ability of workers to get to and from work, and aggravating an already overbearing and stressful traffic situation.

It’s time to get back to the drawing board.

The factors which resulted in the first attempt to secure funding to deal with this matter must be urgently reviewed with a view to reapplying or redirecting efforts. The minister has indicated that his ministry is now working with the Andean Development Bank to get a grant to create a new programme. Yet, such a grant is also likely to have conditions and prerequisites which must be passed.

A serious effort has to be made to provide relief, not just token talks with funding agencies which are then, later and behind closed doors, abandoned due to conditions not being fulfilled.

The failed attempt to access flood funding is, dismayingly, just one of several disclosures in relation to major public procurement works of national importance which have emerged almost belatedly through the proceedings of the Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives.

Without this committee, it seems we would not have also learned of the shelving of the National Oncology Centre. At least citizens can take that for a silver lining. Many things are not working well, but at least the Parliament’s committees are providing the transparency we deserve.