Tag Archives: Rapid Rail

Half truths and manifestos

By Raffique Shah
Submitted: August 23, 2016
Posted: August 28, 2016

Raffique ShahI don’t know that the majority of people in the country are influenced in any way by the manifestos presented by various parties—in our case two, one from the UNC/PP and the other from the PNM.

In fact, I believe few people, likely less than ten percent of the electorate, read these voluminous documents. In my case, I sought the synopses of the presenters because I know they will have highlighted what they saw as the fundamentals of what they would implement if elected, and certainly their most marketable offerings.
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Rapid rail and productivity

Rapid Rail
Rapid Rail
By George Alleyne
September 15, 2010 – newsday.co.tt

The decision by the People’s Partnership Government not to proceed with the rapid rail project will result, if implemented, in the continued overcrowding of the nation’s roads and loss of productivity in the work place and the classrooms.
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No more wastage of public funds

Water Taxi
Water Taxi
By Raffique Shah
August 15, 2010

IT is easy for people to say that the new Government should stop looking back, stop blaming the ousted People’s National Movement (PNM) government for much of the mess we find ourselves in today, and just move on. Had the Patrick Manning regime been more circumspect in handling the huge windfalls we enjoyed from around 2004, I would have endorsed that view, asking the Government to get on with governance, make no reference to the past.
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Smelter, rapid rail in limbo, water taxi to stay

Water Taxi
Water Taxi
By Raffique Shah
June 02, 2010

‘IT would be foolish of the new government to simply abandon all projects started or even planned by the PNM regime. But we have a mandate from the people to immediately take action on some of their billion-dollar plants and plans. I believe the people voted against the Alutrint smelter at La Brea. They voted against Mr Colm Imbert’s rapid rail. They voted against ex-prime minister Patrick Manning’s offshore Otaheite industrial island.
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Consultations Without Representations on the Rapid Rail

A Rapid Rail
A Rapid Rail
THE EDITOR: The financial and technical monstrosity of the Rapid Rail (RR) hitherto incubated in Imbert’s secretive nest has at last now reared its head in the public domain after two abortive consultations that were scheduled for 18 and 19 January. But although NIDCO is the designated operator for building the RR and to whom the EMA issued the final Terms of Reference (TOR) on 24 December 2009 relating to the procedures to be observed for conducting the requisite Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) conditional to the granting of the Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) the Monday March 22 public engagement held at Kampo Restaurant Chaguanas was hosted by the TRINITRAIN Consortium. Not any single official from the EMA and NIDCO was present to answer to public concerns. The media, allegedly now under drug-lords influence but the custodians of democracy was blanked.
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Defending the Maxi-Taxi Success

By Stephen Kangal
January 19, 2007

Rapid RailA self-imposed media embargo seems to have overtaken Minister Colm Imbert lately on the tenuous fate of his TRRP. This prognosis has been reinforced by the negative and depressing body language that he displayed while communicating to the press at Whitehall on the Interchange. I am coming to the intuitive conclusion that Cabinet seems to have ordered secretly a pre-emptive moratorium against the TRRP, in an election year, to avoid any further disastrous fallout from another major reversal and embarrassment while the wounds inflicted by the Chatham debacle are still fresh, politically painful and electorally threatening.
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