Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar lit up the streets of Pe­nal with more than 4,000 Christ­mas lights on Fri­day night, as part of her cam­paign to spread Christ­mas joy to the cit­i­zen­ry. The lights, which cost Gov­ern­ment $150,000 hung across the road­way from See­bal­ack's Hard­ware at SS Erin Road, Pe­nal to Clarke Road Junc­tion. Oth­er streets in­clud­ing Clarke Street, were ex­pect­ed to be lit up in the few days be­fore Christ­mas.

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Prem­c­hand Sookoo said the $150,000 light-up was well spent. He said al­though there were still wa­ter prob­lems and pover­ty in the re­gion, Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion was to al­le­vi­ate the so­cial ills. Sookoo said: "We have some ar­eas that still gets a lim­it­ed sup­ply of wa­ter, Trans­fer, Dig­i­ty Vil­lage, Clarke Road and Mon­key Town."

He added that the Cor­po­ra­tion had part­nered with the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, as well as the Pe­nal po­lice, to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic con­ges­tion. Sookoo said the event was or­gan­ised by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma, whose in­ten­tion was to bring joy, hap­pi­ness and light to the peo­ple of Pe­nal/Debe.

The Chair­man al­so said that the lights would al­so serve as a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the re­gion. Over the past week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been dis­trib­ut­ing scalex­tric sets, mo­nop­oly and scrab­ble games as well as stuffed an­i­mals and ed­u­ca­tion­al gifts to thou­sands of chil­dren. Gifts were dis­trib­uted at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Ma­yaro and Cou­va.