Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist, Lennox Smith says he is con­fi­dent that the Gov­ern­ment will work to en­hance the Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty. Smith, who heads the Laven­tille for Laven­til­lians Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme, met with spe­cial ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter, Da­van­dranath Tan­coo, on Mon­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, in St Clair.

In an in­ter­view, Smith said he felt con­fi­dent in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, in re­gards to its com­mit­ment to as­sist him in de­vel­op­ing Laven­tille in­to a se­cure sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty. Smith said Tan­coo agreed the top pri­or­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment with­in Laven­tille should be "the strength­en­ing so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes." He said Tan­coo as­sured him the Gov­ern­ment would look in­to a $1.3 bil­lion hous­ing pro­gramme.

Smith said the pro­gramme would cost the Gov­ern­ment $1.3 bil­lion over a pe­ri­od of ten to 15 years to con­struct hous­es for Laven­tille res­i­dents who were cur­rent­ly liv­ing in be­low sub-stan­dard con­di­tions. He said those hous­es would be built out­side of Laven­tille, as the com­mu­ni­ty was al­ready con­gest­ed. Smith said a fun­da­men­tal part of the project was to en­sure con­tracts for the con­struc­tion of the hous­es were award­ed to Laven­tille-based con­trac­tors and labour­ers.