Afin de résoudre le problème de transport et des embouteillages sur nos routes, l’ancien gouvernement mettait tout en oeuvre pour réaliser le fameux projet de Métro Léger. De Curepipe à Port Louis, le Mauritius Light Rapid Transit était très critiqué par l’opposition ainsi qu’une partie de la population à cause du coût exorbitant du projet face aux autres priorités du pays, principalement la fourniture de l’eau potable. Ce projet était sans doute un des nombreux facteurs qui a renversé l’ancien gouvernement pendant les élections de décembre 2014.
Dès la prise au pouvoir du nouveau gouvernement le pep, ce dernier s’est principalement penché sur l’épisode de BAI. Et désormais, les projecteurs sont maintenant braqués sur le projet Héritage City. Des nouveaux locaux pour plusieurs ministères, deux hôtels, des villas de luxe que même la majorité des fonctionnaires ne pourront acheter. Bref, des milliards de roupies. Soudainement, on n’a plus de problèmes d’embouteillages (qui empirent quotidiennement) et on n’a plus de problème de fourniture de l’eau (car les pluies sont au rendez-vous).
C’est bien de vouloir apporter du nouveau dans le pays. Mais aucun autre projet n’a eu droit à un traitement similaire, jusqu’à même d’avoir une séance spéciale du cabinet des ministres. Même pas le salaire minimum ou l’insécurité quotidienne qui règne dans le pays avec des accidents et crimes odieux. Énergie verte? Charges provisoires? Embouteillages? Réforme électorale? Carte d’identité biométrique?
Après tout, c’est juste une affaire de priorité…
Update 5 Aout 2016 : Le projet de Heritage City est mis au frigo par le conseil des ministres.
Yashvinblogs 
This is such a waste of my money.
I would have prefered the railway project. It is a pity that we are NEVER going to see this happening.
It was good solution to our daily congestion problem no matter what others have to say.
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It is a pity that proposed projects are mainly luxury ones when there is a need to improve infrastructure, social housing, utilities water/electricity/telecoms/internet. There is a drastic problem with traffic and public transport should be improved. A national metro/rail network is urgently needed to relieve congestion on the roads. The fact that there are so many cars on the roads is because public transport service is so bad. When arriving at the airport there is no other means than by road to get to a destination but even no direct bus express service from South to North. The bus from Vacoas to Port Louis gets held-up on main Vacoas-QB road at La Louise junction. What used to be a 30mins trip in the old days now takes almost one hour to reach PL. I guess that it is a question of budgets and priorities.
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Another analysis of this wet-dream: http://weluvmu.com/blog/2016/03/05/heritage-v-highlands-a-tale-of-two-cities/
Who is going to finance it, at what rate, the impact on our future…? Any need for improving our existing infrastructure for making our normal everyday lives better? No, Dodoland’s current leaders just expect the ordinary civilians to trust its leaders blindly and everything will be alright…
Some very easy (meaning low in capital investment and time for implementation) policy decisions that could be taken for improving the majority of tax payers:
– shifting policemen from snoozing in the police stations to patrolling the streets and highways for actively enforcing existing laws (here, you already feel safer due to less opportunity for petty crime/larceny), and causes heightened awareness for corner-cutters to pay attention to how they are (ab)using the safety of other road-users. This includes enforcement of bus schedules by policemen, and not by the current “check’s” who are merely bus-hopping rubber stamps.
– incorporating a maintenance element in all public infrastructure under the Public Procurement Act: a minimum of 5 years of maintenance of whatever the State purchases by way of its para-statal bodies would actually ensure that no GIGO is experienced at any time during their performance: just imagine how this would have actively prevented the cases of Pailles and Terre Rouge Verdun roads collapsing – by enforcing the Design Engineer to oversee the execution process and putting the Contractor to task would inevitably prevent these problems from arising. Same of the numerous high-tech equipment purchased for hospitals being put to dormancy due to logistics of procuring critical spares by a separate supply contract; or Rs 1 billion worth of medicines being stored improperly and then needing to be discarded before their expiry date: examples abound everywhere…
– adding to the current Declaration of Assets required from Members of Parliament the requirement for this to be made public (yes, go figure why the preceding government made it available only to the DPP). Add to this the requirement to disclose family ties to all existing government servants. Now you are walking the talk about transparency.
– Phasing out of the Disaster Management Committee by having the Water Resources Unit carefully re-designing all critical flood-mitigation infrastructure to 150-year return periods (yes, not the puny half-metre-wide drains that get clogged with silt and debris at any downpour) to re-route all flood waters into our existing natural drains and water courses. WRU is the state body which knows water bodies best and is therefore the most appropriate body to manage these.
– Cameras (the ones which actually work and even in the dark) at every major road intersections: these have proved to be invaluable in detecting serious road offences (remember that poor policeman hit by a rogue car?) We also recall a significant drop in burglaries in the Flic-en-Flac region upon installing a camera at the entrance of the morcellement. Why not implement the same at social and traffic hotspots?
– implementation of ethical financing (based on Islamic finance, i.e., non-interest based) for all major infrastructure financing: it engages local resources into a a meaningful and cleaner way of investing hard-earned money, instead of quick ‘profits’ from the local vampires like Sunkai, White Dot, etc…
Come election time, there will be some buildings to boast about, like they pitifully tried to do with the only building of Ebene at the time – the smartest building of the world, as they sold it, before lamentably biting the dust. And the current government is pretending that this will not repeat itself, with fingers crossed behind its back…
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