Sod turned for tertiary education complex in Chaguanas

Acting PM Jack Warner greets Prof Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Pro Vice Chancellor and principal of UWI Open Campus. Also in picture are Minister of Community Development Nizam Baksh, left, Prof Alvin Wint, second left, and Senator Fazal Karim, Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education.—Express Photo by: TREVOR WATSON

Acting Prime Minister Jack Warner turned the sod Friday to begin work on an administrative complex for the ministry of tertiary education off the Uriah Butler Highway near the Divali Nagar site in Chaguanas.

The complex will house the ministry's headquarters and several tertiary education institutions including National Training Agency, Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP), Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT), and University of the West Indies open campus.

The buildings will stand on a 15-acre site and the project is expected to be completed in 18 months.

Warner also announced that Endeavour Road, near the Complex, would be transformed into a four-lane roadway to facilitate the additional traffic that the complex will bring. He added that government is also planning a highway from Munroe Road, Cunupia to Caroni.

"These buildings would not be complete or can't survive with that kind of Mickey Mouse road outside. A Government that plans properly must plan ahead and that is why I want to tell you we shall change that road outside to a four-lane," he said.

Warner said he hopes citizens would be prepared to make some sacrifices for progress, even if it means relocation. He said similar road developments will take place in south Trinidad to accommodate the anticipated heavier volume of traffic for the Debe campus of the University of the West Indies.

He said if people remain "buried in the past" there would be no progress. He noted that the people of Charlieville allowed the government to split their community in two to accommodate the Uriah Butler highway.

"You would have still been going through the Southern Main Road because you don't want to give up homes. The people of Charlieville made the ultimate sacrifice, split Charlieville in two, to make a highway because of progress. That is the price of progress," he said.

He also made reference to the current protests by activists who are demanding that the route of the highway to Point Fortin be changed. "For me it is incredulous. How do you build a highway to Point Fortin and bypass the population centres of Penal, Debe and Siparia?" he said.

Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education (MSTTE), Fazal Karim, stated that the government complex would save millions of dollars. Karim said in the past eight years the state paid $168.8 million in rent for several tertiary education institutions.