Sando PTSC in Lara Stadium

“The PTSC lands form very valuable commercial and residential real estate,” said Al Rawi. “Imagine, therefore, your board walk on the sea side with commercial activity coupled with housing activity on that entire acreage of land leading up to the hospital.” The Lara Stadium has cost tax payers over $500 million and remains unopened. It was started in 2006 under the tenure of now deceased former Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

Moving the hub out of San Fernando will decrease pollution from the effluent run off from PTSC buses into the wharf, said Al Rawi.

Its new location out of the city will provide upgraded facilities for bus drivers who, according to him, are subject to poor physical working conditions as well as create space for commercial activity at the new hub itself. “So you see, the land at the waterfront can be put to better use.” This better use involves the development of the long talked about Waterfront project which - in its first phase - will see development along the shore from Hatters Pan Yard all the way to the Wharf.

Al-Rawi said that, since the San Fernando City Corporation was forced to operate on a “shoe-string budget” under the last government, San Fernando was in need of development to provide new sources of employment and a “mecca of entertainment” for its more than 60,000 residents. Subsequent phases of the Waterfront’s development will extend beyond the wharf down to the train line and, in the other direction, reach as far as Mosquito Creek.

According to Al-Rawi, the movement of the PTSC hub is in its “conceptual” stage, but he indicated that a cabinet note will be presented in Parliament next week on the matter and he is confident that work will begin before the year’s end. “This is a promise that will be kept in San Fernando,” Al-Rawi assured. The Attorney General praised George Singh, Founder and CEO of Southex, for its 25 years of existence and said they are an example of the kind of entrepreneurship that the government is trying to facilitate to grow the economy in a time of depressed energy prices.