Debe residents seek answers on Govt’s AI data centre plan

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Hope for jobs was tem­pered by con­cerns over wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and a lack of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion yes­ter­day, as res­i­dents of Debe re­act­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish AI da­ta cen­tres in the com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing they want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on how the project would af­fect their lives.

The an­nounce­ment that Debe has been ear­marked as the pro­posed home for one of the coun­try’s biggest tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments has sparked cu­rios­i­ty across the south Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty. While some res­i­dents wel­comed the prospect of jobs and de­vel­op­ment, oth­ers ques­tioned whether the area’s in­fra­struc­ture could sup­port fa­cil­i­ties known in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for their sig­nif­i­cant elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter de­mands.

The Gov­ern­ment an­nounced it had signed mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with Flori­da-head­quar­tered Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings and New York-based Ernst and Young LLP on Fri­day to de­vel­op two ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres in T&T as part of a pro­posed mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has since said the fa­cil­i­ties are ex­pect­ed to be lo­cat­ed with­in the Debe Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone and in­sist­ed res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial wa­ter sup­plies would not be af­fect­ed by the project, out­lin­ing plans that in­clude man-made ponds in the short term and de­sali­na­tion plants over the longer term.

For Debe res­i­dent Sham­my Gagaram, the pro­pos­al car­ries promise, but on­ly if it im­proves the com­mu­ni­ty with­out strain­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices. He ad­mit­ted he still need­ed to learn more about the project, say­ing he had heard the fa­cil­i­ties would re­quire large amounts of elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter.

“Once we are gain­ing some­thing from this project, we could take a chance. Once it does not in­ter­fere with our wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty,” Gagaram said.

He be­lieves the in­vest­ment could breathe new life in­to the rur­al dis­trict.

“Debe doesn’t re­al­ly have much. So, if that builds in Debe, I think it will bright­en the Debe com­mu­ni­ty. And it will be bet­ter for the peo­ple in South Trinidad.”

Like Gagaram, Taz­im Ho­sein said he was not op­posed to the idea but want­ed Gov­ern­ment to clear­ly ex­plain how res­i­dents would ben­e­fit.

“If it ben­e­fits me in any way, no prob­lem,” he said. “But if it doesn’t ben­e­fit me, then why do I have to?”

Ho­sein ac­knowl­edged he did not ful­ly un­der­stand what a da­ta cen­tre was and said that was pre­cise­ly why au­thor­i­ties need­ed to en­gage res­i­dents be­fore mov­ing ahead.

“We want to build a da­ta cen­tre... for who? The peo­ple of Debe? What would ben­e­fit us at the end of the day? And that’s what we’re talk­ing about.”

While he said wa­ter sup­ply in his area had gen­er­al­ly not been an is­sue, he not­ed oc­ca­sion­al low-volt­age elec­tric­i­ty prob­lems and said flood­ing re­mained one of his biggest con­cerns.

Oth­ers were more op­ti­mistic.

San­dra Ram­sam­my, who lives in neigh­bour­ing Pe­nal, be­lieves the project could pro­vide a much-need­ed boost to em­ploy­ment in that part of South Trinidad, al­though she too ad­mit­ted her un­der­stand­ing of da­ta cen­tres was lim­it­ed.

“Very good. Ben­e­fi­cial for the com­mu­ni­ty, and close com­mu­ni­ties too,” she said.

Asked why, Ram­sam­my replied, “Well, main­ly em­ploy­ment-wise, be­cause the em­ploy­ment rate is low right now.”

She said she would nev­er­the­less like Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to ex­plain the project to res­i­dents be­fore con­struc­tion be­gins so the com­mu­ni­ty ful­ly un­der­stands both the ben­e­fits and its im­pact.

Not every­one was con­vinced.

Jared Greenidge said his biggest con­cern was whether the en­vi­ron­men­tal cost of the project would out­weigh its promised ben­e­fits.

“I think that it just came out of nowhere, to be hon­est,” he said. “And they didn’t re­al­ly con­sult with the res­i­dents.”

Greenidge said res­i­dents need­ed far more in­for­ma­tion be­fore they could make an in­formed judge­ment.

“It would be good for them to shed light on it more and make the in­for­ma­tion about it pub­lic and what the re­al ben­e­fits are. I think that will help peo­ple un­der­stand.”

Padarath did not re­spond yes­ter­day to phone calls seek­ing com­ment on the con­cerns raised by res­i­dents.

The Gov­ern­ment said the pro­posed projects have the po­ten­tial to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, strength­en dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and cre­ate thou­sands of jobs if they pro­ceed. But in Debe, where many res­i­dents are still try­ing to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what an AI da­ta cen­tre is, sup­port ap­pears to de­pend less on the tech­nol­o­gy it­self and more on whether the promised ben­e­fits reach the peo­ple who will live clos­est to it.