Too many unaswered questions about Arima church: Opposition

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has no problem with the approval of state lands to build a church at Heights of Guanapo.

But in the case of this "mystery" church there are too many unanswered questions, she told reporters.

“Nothing is wrong worth giving lands for a church, nothing is wrong with that. But why all the secrecy?” she asked.

She questioned the role of the state in the project and the roles of both the Shanghai Construction Company and UDeCOTT, the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago.

Persad-Bissessar said Prime Minister Patrick Manning did not address the real concerns raised among the population during his 54-minute presentation in Parliament on Friday.

Oropouche East MP Roodal Moonilal had similar questions when he spoke in the House of Representatives.

"How they reach there? If you give Shanghai construction a map they cannot find the Heights of Guanapo? How they reach to Arima? Who carried them there?...The question is not the land and the State giving land for the church...how did Shanghai construction company get there, that is the issue," he said.

Moonilal said Shanghai Construction is in Trinidad and Tobago under a government-to-government arrangement to work on specific construction projects and wanted to know how the company could be involved in building a private church.

He wondered if cost overruns on projects by Shanghai Construction are "now paying for private construction in Arima? That is the question were are asking today."