Hunger striker Dr Wayne Kublalsingh says continuing the Debe to Mon Desir leg of the Point Fortin Highway in this time of diminishing oil prices constitutes criminality in public office.
“Debe to Mon Desir is excessive, wasteful, destructive and possibly violently corrupt. Any attempt to now take a loan or persist with Debe to Mon Desir, when there is a superior alternative available, the taxpayer is already saddled with debt, oil and gas prices are diminishing and massive destruction will be incurred, constitutes criminality in public office. “It deserves the firmest possible public reprimand and sanction. It is rubbing salt into our economic wound.”
Kublalsingh, whose protest hunger strike is well over 100 days, was responding to the an announcement in Parliament by Works Minister Dr Suruj Rambachan that the billion-dollar Point Fortin Highway project will not be stopped in planned cutbacks for 2015. Kublalsingh, head of the Highway Re-route Movement, had said in December last year the Government will be forced to stop the project because of falling oil prices and that will be a victory for the people.
Clearly upset yesterday, he recalled in a release that the Inter-American Development Bank, in a feasibility study of the Point Fortin Highway, had said it was over designed, too expensive, a better alternative was possible and the tendering process was questionable. The IADB had said it would not entertain any proposal for funding this project.
Rambachan said the National Infrastructure Development Company had secured a final loan of $1.5 billion last December for the project and money was available to continue it.