Lee says central will no longer be ignored

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Cen­tral Trinidad will no longer be side­lined or ig­nored, de­clared Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ca­roni Cen­tral MP David Lee, as he de­liv­ered a force­ful ad­dress at the Cou­va Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s an­nu­al Christ­mas and Awards Func­tion. The event was held on Fri­day at the Cham­ber’s ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex on Cam­den Road, Cou­va.

Lee said Cen­tral Trinidad had served as the eco­nom­ic back­bone of the coun­try for decades, yet had been treat­ed “like a spare part.”

“Your in­dus­tries car­ried this na­tion when oth­ers fal­tered. Your man­u­fac­tur­ing saved for­eign ex­change when re­serves col­lapsed. Your ex­ports kept the dol­lar sta­ble when every­thing else shook. Your em­ploy­ers held fam­i­lies to­geth­er when na­tion­al sys­tems were fail­ing,” he said. “And what did Cen­tral re­ceive? Flood­ing, ne­glect, stag­nant in­fra­struc­ture, in­ad­e­quate in­vest­ment, slow ap­provals and a seat out­side the room while oth­ers made de­ci­sions about Cen­tral.”

He stressed that the era of ex­ploit­ing Cen­tral’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while over­look­ing its de­vel­op­ment needs was “over per­ma­nent­ly”.

Ac­cord­ing to Lee, Cou­va and Point Lisas were not mere­ly con­trib­u­tors to the na­tion­al econ­o­my, but its foun­da­tion.

“They are the back­bone. The an­chor. The dri­ving force be­hind Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic sur­vival,” he said, adding that with­out Cen­tral’s out­put, man­u­fac­tur­ing would col­lapse, en­er­gy down­stream op­er­a­tions would fall apart, ex­ports would shrink, for­eign ex­change would dry up, and thou­sands would lose their jobs.

He said the next ma­jor eco­nom­ic boom “will be built in Cen­tral, or it will not be built at all,” and vowed that the Gov­ern­ment would stand “firm­ly, ag­gres­sive­ly, un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly” with the re­gion.

“When Cen­tral ris­es, the Re­pub­lic ris­es. When busi­ness grows, the na­tion grows. And when we say a Gold­en Fu­ture is com­ing — we mean it. This Gov­ern­ment will nev­er again al­low Cen­tral to be treat­ed as in­vis­i­ble.”

Lee out­lined sev­er­al key ini­tia­tives un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, which he de­scribed as “de­vel­op­ment by bull­doz­er, by crane, by in­vest­ment, by ne­go­ti­a­tion, by ex­e­cu­tion not by pre­sen­ta­tions or the­o­ret­i­cal plans”.

The Blue­print in­cludes:

The San Fer­nan­do–Ma­yaro High­way

Wa­ter­front re­de­vel­op­ment in both Port of Spain and San Fer­nan­do

Port ex­pan­sions at Ga­le­o­ta and Port of Spain

A new Jus­tice Cen­tre at Tamana

A world-class tourism and ma­ri­na de­vel­op­ment on Car­rera Is­land

Ma­jor in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial re­new­al projects

And the flag­ship ini­tia­tive: a 250-acre trans­for­ma­tion of Gold­en Grove in­to a mod­ern town­ship

He said the projects are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate 50,000 jobs and bil­lions in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, de­scrib­ing the pro­gramme as the largest na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment stim­u­lus in two decades.

“This is not in­cre­men­tal­ism. This is eco­nom­ic shock ther­a­py — strate­gi­cal­ly de­liv­ered,” Lee said.

He af­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment was “pro-busi­ness,” com­mit­ted to de­ci­sive ac­tion and im­me­di­ate re­sults.

“Not com­mit­tees. Not con­ver­sa­tions. Not ex­cus­es,” he added.

CCIC Pres­i­dent De­o­raj Ma­hase said that in 2025 the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had con­cerns about crime, the short­age of for­eign ex­change, and ship­ping and lo­gis­tics is­sues re­lat­ing to the clear­ing of car­go. He said the CCIC recog­nis­es the ef­forts be­ing made by the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress these mat­ters. “We look for­ward to pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in 2026 and be­yond.”

Ma­hase added that the CCIC wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s thrust in­to the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and the re­cent re­moval of tar­iffs on agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports to the Unit­ed States. He said the Cham­ber was al­so look­ing for­ward to in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in the fence-line com­mu­ni­ties around the Point Lisas area.