Rowley telling lies; Point highway on track to end in Point Fortin

Keith Rowley: "The Prime Minister is from Penal. As far as she concerned she had come into office to develop Penal..."

Keith Rowley is up to his old tricks of telling lies hoping that would help him win back his job as party leader and then propel him into the prime minister’s chair. 

His latest lie is that the PNM was going to build a hospital in Point Fortin but the PP government chose instead to build the Golconda to Point Fortin Highway extension. The PNM has been promising both projects for decades and never came close to doing anything more than promise.

The People’s Partnership government is delivering on both. In fact it is building five hospitals but Rowley doesn’t like the idea of a hospital in Penal and a children’s hospital in Couva. For him and the PNM, people in those areas don’t matter so in typical PNM style he wants them stopped the same way he wants the Debe campus of the University of the West Indies to stop.

This “interim” PNM leader is making charges that have no foundation, saying the government plans to end the highway in Penal. He goes further with his stupidity: "The Prime Minister is from Penal. As far as she concerned she had come into office to develop Penal and that is why in a little island like this we are going to have two law schools. One in St Augustine and one in Penal.” 

Rowley again has shown his juvenile political thinking based on his narrow vision that excludes anyone and everyone whom he does not perceive to be a PNM supporter.

Rowley and his allies like OWU boss Ancel Roget have been working hard to stop the highway. When Roget teamed up with Kublalsingh, this is what Kublalsingh told the media: “This new political formation will defeat the political elite.” And we know that Roget and Rowley are a team with a destructive agenda to bring down the government.

But neither Kublalsingh, Rowley nor Roget would stop the work of the government led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar. 

The government is building the highway and it will end in Point Fortin. Works and Infrastructure Minister Dr. Surujrattan Rambachan noted recently that work on the Point Fortin end is in progress. “We have started work from the Point Fortin end 2.5 km. We hope to finish 50 per cent of the highway, at least at a minimum, by the end of December next year (2014), weather conditions permitting.” Point Fortin is where it ends, not Penal! 

Road clearing work at the Dunlop Roundabout in Point Fortin

That puts Rowley’s lie to rest. The PP is committed to building the highway, to develop communities along the route of the highway and bring relief to the people of Point Fortin. 

It is committed to developing Trinidad and Tobago through performance and delivery, not by making promises. 

It is also a lie that the PNM government was building the highway to Point Fortin. This is the lie that Rowley is telling people: “When this Government came into office in May, 2010, they met the government of Trinidad and Tobago engaged in the construction of a highway to Point Fortin.” That’s a lie.

The Manning government had promised it but it was the PP government that started the highway project in January 2011. And every day since them certain people have tried everything possible to block the highway. But they will fail.

Rowley can tell all the lies and spread all the misinformation he can dream up they won’t change the fact that the Kamla Persad-Bissessar government is delivering to the people more than any previous government. 

With respect to the highway, this is what she promised and this is what she will do. “No one will stop us. We are working to bring the highway down from Golconda… The people of the south deserve as much development as the people of the north.” 

And she will build the hospitals and university campuses where they are needed because the United National Congress and the People’s Partnership government are committed to building Trinidad and Tobago for all the people, not only those who cling to the Balisier and people like Keith Rowley.

Commentary supplied by the UNITED NATIONAL CONGRESS