SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres do not be­long to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.This was stat­ed by Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. He was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of the Cara­pichaima Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Samp­son Street, on Mon­day.Pe­ters said com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres be­longed to the peo­ple of T&T who must take an ac­tive role in the man­age­ment and up­keep of the fa­cil­i­ties to en­sure in­fra­struc­ture did not go in­to a state of dis­re­pair.

He said his min­istry was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sev­er­al prob­lems with com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres whose man­age­ment ha­bit­u­al­ly ran to them to com­plain about triv­ial prob­lems.Those prob­lems, he said, ranged from the chang­ing of light bulbs and faulty flush­ing mech­a­nisms in toi­lets.Pe­ters said he be­lieved there were peo­ple in the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties who had the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly run the show.

He said those in­di­vid­u­als should be placed on the man­age­ment com­mit­tees of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres.Pe­ters told the Cara­pichaima vil­lagers to take good care of their com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre which cost the State $1.8 mil­lion.He said the cen­tre should take a proac­tive ap­proach in fill­ing the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty along the lines of so­cial up­lift­ment and train­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple to steer them away from a life of crime.

Greet­ings to the com­mu­ni­ty were al­so de­liv­ered by Ra­mona Ram­di­al, the Cou­va North MP. Awards were al­so hand­ed to per­sons from the vil­lage who have made sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions over the years.Among them were Car­los Greene, Lystra Sinaswee, Nar­ine Ra­goo and Mo­barak Ali.