Sascha Wil­son

Burn­ing de­bris and blocked roads were the or­der of the day as protests over var­i­ous prob­lems swept through sev­en ar­eas in south Trinidad yes­ter­day. Al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly protests were mount­ed in:

• Rio Claro

• Tabaquite

• Bar­rack­pore

• Ce­dros

• La Brea

• White­land

• Moru­ga

The is­sues in­clud­ed bad roads, no wa­ter, no gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion, no jobs and a di­lap­i­dat­ed school build­ing. From 3 am, com­muters were un­able to en­ter or leave the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro area as burn­ing de­bris, in­clud­ing tyres and old ap­pli­ances, and trees were dragged across the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road. The block­age took place at var­i­ous parts of the road from Deep Ravine to Agos­ti­ni Vil­lage.

Spokesman Bun­ny Ma­habirs­ingh said the road was a ma­jor road net­work, but yet it had been in a de­plorable state for sev­er­al years. He said their ap­peal to their MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters had fall­en on deaf ears. "This is com­ing from UNC peo­ple. This is noth­ing po­lit­i­cal. We get no rep­re­sen­ta­tion from him. We get fail rep­re­sen­ta­tion," Ma­habirs­ingh com­plained, adding that sev­er­al at­tempts to meet with Pe­ters had been un­suc­cess­ful.

In La Brea, a group of more than 50 res­i­dents staged a row­dy protest, call­ing on the man­age­ment of the Port of La Brea to give them jobs. Mean­while, par­ents shut down the As­ja Bar­rack­pore Pri­ma­ry School which they said was in a de­plorable con­di­tion. Protests over bad roads were al­so held in Tabaquite, Fifth Com­pa­ny, Moru­ga, and Coros­al Vil­lage, close to White­land.

Pres­i­dent of the Coros­al Vil­lage Coun­cil Joseph Mothe com­plained that a big land­slip had made tra­vers­ing along the road lead­ing to their com­mu­ni­ty very dan­ger­ous. Com­plain­ing that the road had not been paved in 31 years, he said taxis had re­fused to ser­vice the area, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for their chil­dren to get to school and back home.

Mothe said they al­so had no pipe-borne wa­ter and the com­mu­ni­ty tanks sup­ply­ing the area were emp­ty. He said their MP, Su­ruj Ram­bachan, vis­it­ed the area a few weeks ago and was aware of the prob­lems, but had done noth­ing to help them. Mean­while, res­i­dents of Ce­dros, Ica­cos and Granville al­so took ac­tion in Ce­dros over no wa­ter and bad roads.

Res­i­dents sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment scrap the $7.5 bil­lion Point Fortin High­way and use the mon­ey to up­grade ex­ist­ing roads and con­struct the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Pt Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon said when she heard about the protest in Ce­dros, she called the spokesman who told her they did not get a wa­ter sup­ply in a month.

Gopee-Scoon said when con­tact­ed, an of­fi­cial at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty said they were re­pair­ing the Granville Sta­tion. The of­fi­cial, she said, as­sured her that from to­day, the au­thor­i­ty would be di­rect­ing wa­ter to those ar­eas on a sched­uled ba­sis. Calls to the cel­lu­lar phones of La Brea MP Fitzger­ald Jef­fery, Ma­yaro MP Win­ston Pe­ters, Moru­ga MP Clifton de Coteau and Tabaquite MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan went unan­swered.

De Coteau and Ram­bachan are out of the coun­try on gov­ern­ment busi­ness. Dur­ing the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then Op­po­si­tion Leader, had promised: "I pledge to es­tab­lish a Min­istry of the Peo­ple where groups of con­cerned peo­ple can take their griev­ances and be heard rather than have to re­sort to burn­ing tyres and demon­strat­ing on the street."

The cur­rent Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment deals with so­cial ser­vices and pro­grammes.