Highway activists want apology from Sinanan

After Works Minister Rohan Sinanan’s statement that work has not restarted on the highway to Point Fortin, the Highway Reroute Movement (HRM) is demanding an apology. The group has repeated its claim that Sinanan’s statements are false and defamatory. Head of the HRM, Dr Wayne Kublalsingh, met with reporters at Rosso Settlement in Pepper Village, Fyzabad on Tuesday.

“We give the minister until December 31 to apologise, or else he will meet us in court,” he warned. “The minister alleges that work on the Debe to Mon Desir Highway has not restarted after its collapse in 2016. This is false.”

Leela Boodhai of the HRM said Kublalsingh and the HRM were present at three locations between December 6 and 15 and tried to stop the contractors from working. “Therefore, Sinanan’s allegation that Dr Kublalsingh was spreading misinformation about the claiming that works had restarted is false,” Boodhai said.

In an earlier report, Sinanan said the HRM blamed flooding in the Penal/Debe area on bridge works in that area. “This is false. The movement is claiming that the embankment between Gandhi Village and Suchit Trace, alongside Debe Trace, impedes the sheet flow of water across an integral part of Oropouche Wetlands,” Kublalsingh said.

The HRM says this had been a concern for scientists and experts of the Institute of Marine Affairs, the Water Resources Agency at WASA and the Met Office from 2006-2010, the year the certificate of environmental clearance for the project was awarded. Kublalsingh said he wrote to the Prime Minister in 2015 asking him to remove the embankment.

An upset Kublalsingh said Sinanan claims the HRM blames the PM for the floods in Debe/Penal. “Our claim is that Rowley ought not to exculpate himself for the flooding, which has caused immense economic and social distress to communities in the area of the embankment,” Kublalsingh said.

Rowley, he said, met with the HRM when he was the Opposition Leader and promised to raise the matter in Parliament. Kublalsingh said the HRM presented the recommendations of the Armstrong report to Rowley in 2015.

The report, on the Debe to Mon Desir segment of the San Fernando to Point Fortin Highway, was produced in 2013 by an independent review committee chaired by Dr James Armstrong. The PM, said Kublalsingh, sent Sinanan to meet with the HRM in the face of arbitration proceedings.

Some work on the highway must be done in keep­ing with the ruling of the Court of Arbitration under which the gov­ern­ment re­cov­ered almost $1 bil­lion from fired Brazilian high­way con­trac­tor OAS Construtora.

“Arising out of the meeting, Sinanan wrote and published a release stating that no decision will be made on Debe to Mon Desir unless the HRM was first consulted. The minister failed to consult with us and now the matter is before the High Court,” Kublalsingh said.

The HRM leader is facing charges after he tried to stop tractors and bulldozers from entering the land in the Debe area where work is being done to accommodate the highway.