Three-month wait for US Embassy approval ‘unacceptable’

Gail Alexan­der

The US Em­bassy had to wait three months, be­tween May and Au­gust 2025, to get a san­i­tary de­ter­mi­na­tion to erect tem­po­rary liv­ing quar­ters for the work­force con­struct­ing its new fa­cil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh yes­ter­day.

"The rep­u­ta­tion­al cost to TT as an in­vest­ment de­ter­mi­na­tion of a three-month wait for a du­pli­cat­ed san­i­tary re­view is un­ac­cept­able," Swarats­ingh added dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on the Pub­lic Health (Amend­ment) (No. 2) Bill, 2026.

The bill was passed with Sen­a­tors' unan­i­mous sup­port. The bill was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week. It will re­move du­pli­ca­tion of ap­provals in the con­struc­tion process which caus­es de­lays. It re­moves the stage for the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health's (CMOH) in­put from the build­ing per­mits process.

Swarats­ingh de­tailed how the CMOH stage length­ened the time projects took, de­lay­ing them. "That's why it some­times takes years for projects to get ap­proval," he added, not­ing the CMOH stage costs ap­pli­cants about $100 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

He said over ten years, that was close to $800 mil­lion, and de­lays cost TT's econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly where in­vest­ment is con­cerned.

Cit­ing a case which the UNC Gov­ern­ment faced when it en­tered of­fice, Swarats­ingh said, "The Unit­ed States Em­bassy plan­ning mat­ters il­lus­trate the prob­lem pre­cise­ly and it is a mat­ter that the Min­istry of Health it­self had cit­ed as an in­stance in which that Min­istry had to in­ter­vene."

"In March 2025, the Em­bassy ap­plied to Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion through De­vel­opTT to erect tem­po­rary liv­ing quar­ters for the work­force con­struct­ing its new fa­cil­i­ty. In May 2025, Town and Coun­try grant­ed ap­proval dur­ing the san­i­tary de­ter­mi­na­tion pe­ri­od. The ap­pli­ca­tion then went to the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, where it re­mained from May un­til Au­gust 2025, ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months," Swarats­ingh said.

Ap­proval was ob­tained, "...on­ly af­ter in­ter­ven­tion of the line min­is­ter."

He not­ed: "First, the Statu­to­ry Plan­ning Au­thor­i­ty dis­charged its func­tion on time, the de­lay arose en­tire­ly at the du­plica­tive state. Sec­ond, the mat­ter was re­solved not by the sys­tem but by min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion, which is nei­ther scal­able nor avail­able to or­di­nary cit­i­zens build­ing homes.

"And third: the ap­pli­cant was a sov­er­eign mis­sion, build­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for the work­ers con­struct­ing a ma­jor diplo­mat­ic fa­cil­i­ty. The rep­u­ta­tion­al cost to TT as an in­vest­ment de­ter­mi­na­tion of a three-month wait for a du­pli­cat­ed san­i­tary re­view is un­ac­cept­able."

Swarats­ingh added, "For a project worth $100 mil­lion, a three-month de­lay of this kind rep­re­sents about $2.25 mil­lion of con­struc­tion costs, rough­ly two per cent of the val­ue of the project. Ac­cord­ing to De­vel­opTT, three months is an av­er­age wait for a non-res­i­den­tial ap­pli­cant at the CMOH. The Em­bassy's ex­pe­ri­ence wasn't an out­lier. It was the or­di­nary ex­pe­ri­ence of a com­mer­cial ap­pli­cant in TT," he said, not­ing no mea­sures were tak­en over the last ten years to ad­dress is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the bill.

Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings, who said the PNM sup­port­ed the bill, not­ed that gen­uine du­pli­ca­tions in the sys­tem and else­where should be re­moved.

Not­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions hav­ing CMOH func­tions, Cum­mings said he hoped 2027 Bud­get al­lo­ca­tions to cor­po­ra­tions would be im­proved to han­dle that.

He al­so queried what would hap­pen to the rest of the de­vel­op­ment process once the bot­tle­neck at is­sue in the Bill is re­moved. Cum­mings warned against re­mov­ing bot­tle­necks from one area and caus­ing oth­ers in an­oth­er lo­ca­tion. He queried what else would be done in the wider ap­proval process.