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Monday, July 28, 2025

Putting Felicity on the map

by

20120919

Fe­lic­i­ty is a vil­lage lo­cat­ed in the Ca­roni Swamp which bor­ders the Gulf of Paria in Cen­tral Trinidad. It is hemmed in on the north by the Cunu­pia Riv­er and runs along Ca­can­dee Road south, for al­most one mile. At the north­ern start on the bank of Cunu­pia Riv­er is the well-known cre­ma­tion fa­cil­i­ty, the Yankaran Cre­ma­tion site. Orig­i­nal­ly es­tab­lished to pro­vide cre­ma­tion fa­cil­i­ties for the hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, we are pleased to note that cit­i­zens of dif­fer­ent faiths al­so use open cre­ma­tion to dis­pose the bod­ies of their de­ceased rel­a­tives.

Fe­lic­i­ty it­self has a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 20,000 in­hab­i­tants and to pro­vide to the ed­u­ca­tion­al needs of the chil­dren of Fe­lic­i­ty, there are two pri­ma­ry schools. They are both owned by the church­es-the Fe­lic­i­ty Hin­du School and the Fe­lic­i­ty Pres­by­ter­ian School. In ad­di­tion there are half a dozen pre-school cen­tres and as many hin­du pub­lic tem­ples.

There are two ar­eas of this large vil­lage that car­ry strange sound­ing names. The north­ern end, near the cre­ma­tion site is called "Cas­sacou." We have not been able to find a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of this name. The south­ern end has an­oth­er vil­lage called "Jan­glee Tol­la." These are two hin­di words that mean "Jun­gle Vil­lage." The area is, how­ev­er high­ly de­vel­oped. There are no signs that a jun­gle ex­ist­ed in this area of Fe­lic­i­ty at any time in the past.

Po­lit­i­cal­ly, Fe­lic­i­ty has had top of the line rep­re­sen­ta­tion in par­lia­ment. Bhadase Sagan Maraj was elect­ed mem­ber of par­lia­ment in 1956. He was the founder of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty and pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Sug­ar Es­tates and Fac­to­ry Work­ers Trade Union. He was suc­ceed­ed by Dr Rudranath Capildeo, then the leader of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty. Bhadase had an­oth­er stint as MP and was fol­lowed by Bas­deo Pan­day who found­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

To­day, Fe­lic­i­ty is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Austin Jack Warn­er, a con­tro­ver­sial man of ac­tion. With­in two years Warn­er has trans­formed the large com­plex Fe­lic­i­ty in­to a hab­it­able area of which the vil­lagers are proud. The roads have been el­e­vat­ed and paved and "box drains" have re­placed the col­lapsed drains that served no pur­pose to the vil­lage. Even WASA made hun­dreds of re-con­nec­tions be­fore the roads were com­plet­ed.

In pol­i­tics, 'to­day's hero could end up as to­mor­row's vil­lain.' But at this point in time, Jack Warn­er, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, is a hero to the peo­ple, not on­ly of Fe­lic­i­ty but al­so to res­i­dents of the en­tire Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy. He must be con­grat­u­lat­ed for pro­vid­ing the same sup­port ser­vices to the en­tire area that is most­ly un­der sea lev­el.

On Sep­tem­ber 15, Min­is­ter Warn­er launched a Fe­lic­i­ty Po­lice Youth Club which rough­ly 600 youths and their par­ents at­tend­ed at the Fe­lic­i­ty Hin­du School au­di­to­ri­um. This is a new ex­per­i­ment in an area that is gen­er­al­ly off the na­tion­al radar when it came to polic­ing. It is not re­gard­ed as a crime hot spot.

At­tend­ing this his­toric launch was Jack Warn­er him­self, act­ing com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mr Stephen Williams, Mr De­o­dat Du­lalchan, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dant of po­lice, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, In­spec­tor Be­dassie and oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers. The may­or of the Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas Or­lan­do Na­gas­sar, brought greet­ings to the as­sem­bly and pledged may­oral sup­port.

I was an in­vit­ed guest and one of the rev­e­la­tions that sur­prised me was that in Fe­lic­i­ty it­self there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 vil­lagers who are mem­bers of the po­lice force. This is a far cry from what ob­tained in po­lice re­cruit­ment 15 years ago. Pro­fes­sor John La­guerre and pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Ryan of the Cen­tre of Ethics Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go were com­mis­sioned by the then Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to pro­duce a study based on "Eth­nic­i­ty and Em­ploy­ment Prac­tices In Trinidad and To­ba­go."

In the po­lice ser­vice they found: "All things be­ing equal, and giv­en the fact that In­do-Trinida­di­an can­di­dates are gen­er­al­ly bet­ter qual­i­fied (aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly), it should fol­low that the num­bers of In­do-Trinida­di­ans se­lect­ed for train­ing should be high­er. It seems that they tend to do less well in the in­ter­view than do their Afro-Trinida­di­an coun­ter­parts.

"For the past sev­er­al years, the mem­bers of the in­ter­view­ing pan­el have all been Afro-Trinida­di­ans. Giv­en the fact that Trinidad is a mul­ti-eth­nic so­ci­ety with na­tion­als be­long­ing to two high­ly di­ver­gent main­stream cul­tures, name­ly In­do-Trinida­di­an and Afro-Cre­ole, it is to be ex­pect­ed that cul­tur­al fac­tors could ac­count for dif­fer­en­tials in in­ter­view per­for­mance in favour of Afro-Trinida­di­ans."

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha


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