John: Revitalisation plan entering contract phase soon

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print plan is on stream, with con­tracts ex­pect­ed to be award­ed soon and the gen­er­a­tion of an es­ti­mat­ed 72,000 jobs from the ac­tiv­i­ty.

John, who was the fea­ture speak­er at yes­ter­day’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at La Ro­maine Sec­ondary School, said the plan was launched last No­vem­ber and at­tract­ed 965 re­spons­es from across the world from what she de­scribed as “se­ri­ous peo­ple.”

“And now we are in the mid­dle of the pro­cure­ment, from one state, Trinidad and very soon, you are go­ing to see projects be­ing award­ed. And ba­si­cal­ly, back­hoes and cranes are go­ing to be in the air, chang­ing the sky­line of T&T, all across Trinidad and To­ba­go, as we roll out 120 projects,” John said.

“At its peak, this mega plan is pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate about 72,000 new jobs across var­i­ous sec­tors, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, tourism, fi­nance, and all kinds of trades across the spec­trum.”

In Feb­ru­ary, John had said in­ter­est came from Pe­ru, the US, Nether­lands, Chi­na, Bel­gium, South Africa, In­dia, Chi­na, France and the Unit­ed King­dom af­ter Gov­ern­ment un­veiled the project last No­vem­ber, and promised 50,919 jobs would be­come avail­able.

Yes­ter­day, she told stu­dents that an area, not far from the school, has been des­ig­nat­ed as a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone.

“And that is a park, a tech­nol­o­gy park. And very soon, the Prime Min­is­ter will be an­nounc­ing all of these Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­cause every sin­gle day, we are meet­ing and we are treat­ing and we are en­gag­ing.” 

She en­cour­aged stu­dents to work dili­gent­ly be­cause jobs would be avail­able for them.

“So, if you study en­gi­neer­ing, con­struc­tion or in­fra­struc­ture, you will need your help to build and man­age these projects. So, we need you. Your coun­try needs you. If you pur­sue tech­nol­o­gy and cod­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will re­quire skill, tech­nol­o­gy and de­vel­op­ers.”

She added, “If you study hos­pi­tal­i­ty or tourism, agri­cul­ture, the new con­ven­tion cen­tres, re­sorts and mari­nas will need trained pro­fes­sion­als. These fa­cil­i­ties will ex­ist be­cause we are build­ing them now. Not to­mor­row.”

In an in­ter­view with re­porters af­ter­wards, the min­is­ter as­sured that the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project un­der­went “a very open ten­der,” em­pha­sis­ing that “the on­ly per­son who couldn’t sub­scribe to this was peo­ple in Lapey­rouse ceme­tery.”

She said the project is now at the sec­ond stage of the re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) process and ex­pressed hope that con­tracts would be award­ed by Sep­tem­ber or Oc­to­ber.

She al­so as­sured that her min­istry has been do­ing a lot of prepara­to­ry work to­wards mit­i­gat­ing flood­ing.

“It have crane in every riv­er,” she said.

She said the coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a “dry wet sea­son” with the El Ni­no weath­er pat­tern.

“So, what is go­ing to hap­pen, that is go­ing to af­fect our wa­ter sup­ply just now. So, I think Min­is­ter (Bar­ry) Padarath will come out very short­ly to make some state­ments, but we are all work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure we mit­i­gate against the fall­out from that.”