A threat of more protest ac­tion yes­ter­day by ac­tivists of east Port-of-Spain was end­ed am­i­ca­bly with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan say­ing he was left im­pressed by their de­mands. The res­o­lu­tion reached by mem­bers of the South East Port-of-Spain Cul­tur­al Work­shop (SE­POS) and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to in­crease em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in sev­er­al hotspot com­mu­ni­ties may avert the threats of pro­test­ers gath­er­ing in front the St Clair of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the near fu­ture.

Last Wednes­day SE­POS mem­bers con­verged at the min­istry's gate armed with plac­ards and chant­i­ng protest slo­gans. Ram­bachan agreed to meet with the ac­tivists yes­ter­day morn­ing at the min­istry's Kent House of­fices on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, Mar­aval. Af­ter the meet­ing, Ram­bachan told the T&T Guardian he was heart­ened to see the am­bi­tion shown by the young­sters in the cul­tur­al group.

"I was im­pressed with what they are seek­ing to do. They are not look­ing for hand­outs, they are not look­ing for favours, they want to be part of a de­vel­op­men­tal process in their area and they are ask­ing me to help them set up an agri­cul­tur­al project and al­so help them to im­prove their cul­tur­al space they have there, which is a build­ing on Besson Street.

"I was very moved to know they have 15 young men train­ing for box­ing. So as I said, they are very keen on their com­mu­ni­ty and I am go­ing to be talk­ing again with them and try to help them, def­i­nite­ly," he said. In ad­di­tion, he said the youths were al­so try­ing to be self-em­ployed, as they have al­ready es­tab­lished a small unit which un­der­takes videog­ra­phy for pri­vate com­pa­nies. Now, he said, the group wants help to train more young peo­ple so that they too can have a ca­reer in the pro­fes­sion.

KF