Renu­ka Singh

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­tailed how the UNC gov­ern­ment will fund some of their plans for the coun­try.

Speak­ing at the par­ty's vir­tu­al meet­ing last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she plans to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Fund to fund its plans to im­prove in­fra­struc­ture.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the UNC gov­ern­ment would not be bor­row­ing mon­ey or through tax­es but would in­stead utilise the cash bal­ances of State-con­trolled in­sti­tu­tion in­vestors like the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion.

"We could use their cash bal­ances to mo­bilise an ini­tial $4 bil­lion in cap­i­tal for the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Fund," she said.

In ad­di­tion to that, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC gov­ern­ment will al­so tap pri­vate in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and pen­sion funds to be­come share­hold­ers.

"So we would have Gov­ern­ment fund­ing and pri­vate in­vest­ment," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that to man­age the fund, they would elect a board in­stead of putting a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter at the helm as is the norm.

The UNC will al­so im­ple­ment a re­mote work­ing sys­tem to help peo­ple work from home.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar fleshed out some of the de­tails of the par­ties "mas­ter plan" which al­so in­clud­ed a Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Im­prove­ment Plan to help with road main­te­nance, traf­fic and flood­ing.

"We could put in place a flexi-time work pol­i­cy. It means that in­stead of every­body hav­ing to reach to work at the same point in time, peo­ple can have flexi-time. You come in a lit­tle lat­er, you leave a lit­tle lat­er so that not every­one is on the road at the same time," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that al­though roads have not been touched by the Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the last five years, they are com­ing now to pave the roads.

She warned con­trac­tors that the Gov­ern­ment would not pay them for the road­works be­fore Au­gust 10.

"The are ow­ing con­trac­tors and peo­ple see­ing the gim­mick," she said.

"Our na­tion's phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture is in a state of col­lapse. Our roads are de­te­ri­o­rat­ing, flood­ing is al­ways a prob­lem, traf­fic con­tin­ues to re­sult in thou­sands of man­pow­er lost," she said.

She said the plan would main­tain the in­fra­struc­ture and cre­ate jobs.

"First we have to fix the traf­fic prob­lem," she said, which in­clud­ed the con­struc­tion of a park and ride fa­cil­i­ty in main towns.

Part of the plan al­so in­cludes an­oth­er wa­ter taxi but from Point Fortin.

"This will help us move peo­ple to ease traf­fic con­ges­tion," she said.

An­oth­er as­pect of the plan to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic woes is a rapid bus sys­tem.

"This will have a ded­i­cat­ed, pre­dictable bus rapid tran­sit sys­tem from North to South and East to West to make trans­port af­ford­able and ease traf­fic con­ges­tion," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said the UNC gov­ern­ment would al­so con­tin­ue to de­cen­tralise gov­ern­ment busi­ness­es so that cit­i­zens did not have to go in­to Port-of-Spain for every­thing.

With re­gards to flood­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the par­ty was on high alert and ready to step in and help those im­pact­ed by the pos­si­ble rains ex­pect­ed over the week­end.

She said part of the plan was al­so to de­silt rivers, cre­ate re­ten­tion ponds and sed­i­ment traps.

"That is a ma­jor thrust to al­le­vi­at­ing the flood­ing," she said.

With re­gards to the sale of Petrotrin re­fin­ery, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was "very con­cerned" about the rush to "give away" Petrotrin 18 days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

"What is dif­fer­ent? You owe an ex­pla­na­tion to the peo­ple of T&T," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while Row­ley la­belled him­self the cor­rup­tion buster and says he will come af­ter the UNC, af­ter five years the on­ly Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to be ar­rest­ed was one of his own. She was re­fer­ring to Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald who was ar­rest­ed for cor­rup­tion.

She al­so took him and his par­ty to task for al­leged­ly try­ing to shame Nabi­la Greene, the UNC can­di­date for To­co/ San­gre Grande.

In the past few days there were video clips al­leged­ly of Greene on a bed be­ing show­ered with mon­ey. Greene de­nied she was the per­son in the video.

"Tonight I stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all my can­di­dates. They have gone to des­per­ate lengths to at­tack her and that's how they've al­ways op­er­at­ed with women," she said.

"What you all have against women? This is a prime min­is­ter who has abused women in the worst way, in pub­lic," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so blast­ed the Gov­ern­ment on the han­dling of cit­i­zens want­i­ng to come home.

"You can­not aban­don 10,000 cit­i­zens," she said.

"There are COVID-19 pro­to­cols al­ready there to bring home your cit­i­zens," she said.

She said if the UNC wins the elec­tion, the par­ty would bring home its na­tion­als.

She said that the Gov­ern­ment's on­ly plan to deal with COVID-19 was to shut down the bor­ders.

"They flat­ten the curve by flat­ten­ing the test­ing," she said.

"They are now us­ing fear and chaos as means to cov­er their fail­ures," she said.

She said that T&T has not test­ed as many as oth­er coun­tries which may be why the pos­i­tive fig­ures were so low.