Sascha Wil­son

Par­ents of chil­dren at­tend­ing a preschool staged a protest oblique­ly op­po­site where cer­e­monies for two US mul­ti-mil­lion projects were tak­ing place in Guayagua­yare. The par­ents and the young­sters held plac­ards plead­ing for an elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply for their near­by school on Wednes­day.

One of the par­ents, Aki­no­la Strak­er, said they were hop­ing to at­tract the at­ten­tion of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in an at­tempt to get some as­sis­tance. The school has been with­out elec­tric­i­ty for over five months, she said. The func­tions of­fi­cial­ly opened the Guayagua­yare Fish Land­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and turned the sod for an en­er­gy port. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of both projects is US $80 mil­lion.

At­tend­ing the cer­e­mo­ny at the fish fa­cil­i­ty were Ma­yaro MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Lar­ry Howai and oth­er spe­cial guests. "Our chil­dren are in the dark. They have no elec­tric­i­ty. They have no fans, they have no fridge. They have noth­ing," Strak­er said. She said pleas for help to their lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and MP had fall­en on deaf ears.

Strak­er al­so called for an Ear­ly Child­hood Cen­tre in Guayagua­yare. She said pre­vi­ous­ly the school was housed un­der a dwelling house, but they were evict­ed be­cause the rent was not paid. Strak­er said the chil­dren, num­ber­ing about 34, are now be­ing housed in an an­nex at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. "The chil­dren can­not get lights but they open­ing a fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty," she said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

De­part­ing from his speech to ad­dress the pro­test­ers, MP Pe­ters ad­vised them to make prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion to have their prob­lems ad­dressed. "To stand up out there with some plac­ards with­out mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion for your­selves will get you ab­solute­ly nowhere," he said. "I will sug­gest that you put down those plac­ards and come in­side here and let me have some di­a­logue."

Pe­ters al­so rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of an east coast de­vel­op­ment fund where rev­enues gen­er­at­ed by busi­ness­es in the area can re­turn to the com­mu­ni­ty for de­vel­op­ment projects in the medi­um to long term. "And I think that will take care a lot of what I think the protests are about," Pe­ters said. How­ev­er, he said, that should not pre­vent con­stituents from en­gag­ing in pro­duc­tive di­a­logue. Heed­ing the min­is­ter, the pro­test­ers came across af­ter the func­tion to meet with Pe­ters.