SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Gov­ern­ment will not bend to the de­mands of the gay and les­bian com­mu­ni­ty. So said act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er while ad­dress­ing a town meet­ing on Tues­day night at the La Paille Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Ca­roni. Con­cerned res­i­dents had asked Warn­er what was Gov­ern­ment's stand on the is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly on the grant­i­ng of rights to lo­cal gays.

Warn­er, who is al­so the Ch­agua­nas West MP and Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, said: "There is no way any­body in this Gov­ern­ment of mine can sup­port the gay rights. I don't know of any­body." Warn­er said when he was go­ing to Par­lia­ment on May 11, re­porters asked Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, what he thought about the gay rights move­ment.

Warn­er said: "He (Mooni­lal) said, 'I have no stand on that.' I won't say more. He told them 'I have no stand on that.' I find that was high, that was fun­ny. "I said, 'Boy, if you have no stand on that, re­mem­ber Oba­ma sup­port­ed that, so he has a stand, and if he could sup­port it, take care peo­ple say we too should sup­port it. I gone.' That is all I say."

On Tues­day Warn­er heard com­plaints from Ca­roni vil­lagers who want­ed their roads and drains fixed, Walk­er Park re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and a pre-school built in the dis­trict. Warn­er said one hand did not clap in Gov­ern­ment and he planned to put some pres­sure on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh to get a pre-school for the vil­lage.

He said Gopeesingh was al­so clam­our­ing for roads and drains in his Ca­roni East Con­stituen­cy. He said work in La Paille would start in two weeks with the paving of five roads and the build­ing of box drains. He said he would sug­gest that $50 mil­lion be al­lo­cat­ed in the next fi­nan­cial year for the con­ver­sion of Walk­er Park in­to an in­door sport­ing com­plex.

Warn­er al­so knocked the Po­lice Ser­vice for the clo­sure of the Ca­roni Po­lice Sta­tion. He said the sta­tion was down­grad­ed with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion with the vil­lagers who now trav­elled as far as Cunu­pia to seek as­sis­tance. He al­so told vil­lagers the Land Set­tle­ment Agency would have their no­ti­fi­ca­tion of statu­to­ry leas­es pre­pared by Ju­ly 2013. Warn­er said they would have up to 30 years to pay for the lease.

At the end of the last pay­ment the vil­lagers would get a deed of own­er­ship, he added. Warn­er asked the peo­ple of La Paille to come out and show their sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment in light of all the crit­i­cism Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was get­ting from the Op­po­si­tion PNM.