Kevon Felmine

When Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan ar­rived at his of­fice in Mar­aval yes­ter­day, he was greet­ed by a small group of pro­test­ers, claim­ing vic­tim­i­sa­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion by Gov­ern­ment. The pro­test­ers, who call them­selves the South-East Port-of-Spain Cul­tur­al Work­shop (SE­POSCW), said jobs were not be­ing pro­vid­ed to the peo­ple of Laven­tille, Beetham Gar­dens, Mor­vant, Sea Lots, Nel­son Street and oth­er ar­eas be­cause they lived in PNM strong­holds and the pre­dom­i­nance of Afro-Trinida­di­ans liv­ing there.

On ap­proach­ing the min­istry's en­trance, the group waved plac­ards at the min­is­ter, who came to speak to the chil­dren of the St Do­minic's and St Mary's chil­dren's homes as the min­istry host­ed its first Kids' Day Pro­gramme in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this coun­try's 50th-an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence.

Speak­ing on the pave­ment out­side the min­istry, at the cor­ner of Long Cir­cu­lar and Sad­dle Roads, pres­i­dent of SE­POSCW, Michael Mor­gan, said they gath­ered there be­cause the lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­istry is re­spon­si­ble for the lack of Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) jobs in the area. He de­mand­ed a meet­ing with Ram­bachan. But al­though the min­is­ter did not en­ter­tain the pro­test­ers yes­ter­day, he said he would meet with them to­mor­row to as­sess their con­cerns.

"We are protest­ing the lack of jobs in east Port-of-Spain. We are say­ing that Gov­ern­ment has an IDB grant to de­vel­op East Port-of-Spain, some $20 mil­lion-odd dol­lars is avail­able and to date we are con­cerned about the con­tracts that will be giv­en out. East Port-of-Spain re­mains a pau­perised com­mu­ni­ty. For some rea­son the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed not to have any de­vel­op­ment at all at present in east Port-of-Spain," Mor­gan said.

Youth ac­tivist Uri­ca Rogers said too many promis­es were be­ing made and not kept. She said res­i­dents were be­ing stig­ma­tised be­cause they were from the "ghet­to." "Peo­ple have (ex­am) pass­es and they are will­ing to work. I?un­der­stand when you send your re­sumes, they are just throw­ing it in the garbage, just leav­ing peo­ple dis­en­chant­ed.

We are be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed be­cause we live in a PNM strong­hold. We are one coun­try and every­one is en­ti­tled to a work. Not be­cause you are aligned to some po­lit­i­cal par­ty, you have to be stig­ma­tised and vic­timised for a youth grow­ing up in a com­mu­ni­ty," Rogers said.