We need connectivity. Not simply highways. We strongly support the Point Fortin to San Fernando Highway. However, the Debe to Mon Desir highway would have demolished one of the most traffic-free, prosperous and connected districts on the planet. And disrupted the future agricultural potential of the Oropouche Lagoon district. This district once provided a food basket for the island; and now feeds the bulk of food to the Siparia, Debe and Penal markets.
Debe to Mon Desir was the tail-end of a megalomaniac Master Gas Plan, which included two highways to Point Fortin, not one. This 2001 Master Gas Plan was a product of Gaffney and Cline, an international gas consultant. The Government paid for this plan; Gaffney and Cline threw it at us; like bubble gum and chiclets; and the Government went for it.
This was development suicide, madness. Luckily, the people deconstructed it: two smelters, three industrial ports; an industrial island off Otaheite; three industrial estates; 14 heavy gas-based foreign owned corporations; and the superfluous Debe to Mon Desir. Our activists fought every inch of the way to rescue this nation from a TT$150 billion fiasco.
If we had gone ahead with this gas-monetisation plan, where would we have got the gas to support it? ArcelorMittal is leaving to build a plant in Iran. T&T cannot, any longer, trade gas in the international investor market, at competitive rates. Too much gas, shale, renewable, coal, oil elsewhere. Dead end. Time to move on.
Time to move on from our oil and gas tabanca.
Wayne Kublalsingh,
The Highway Reroute Movement