The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and the Min­istry for To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment are ex­pect­ed to work to­geth­er to re­vi­talise the com­mu­ni­ty of Bethel specif­i­cal­ly and To­ba­go at large.Min­is­ter for To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment and MP for To­ba­go West Dr Del­mon Bak­er met with area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Bethel/Mt Irvine and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties in the THA Han­del Beck­les on Fri­day at the of­fices of the min­istry.

Both Bak­er and Beck­les are res­i­dents of Bethel and are mem­bers of the Bethel Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church. Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter the meet­ing, Bak­er said strate­gies would be put in place, fo­cused at de­creas­ing the stig­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with the area and strength­en­ing holis­tic de­vel­op­ment in the Bethel com­mu­ni­ty.

"We looked at cer­tain events and ac­tiv­i­ties, chiefly sport­ing, to en­sure that the en­er­gy of our youth is well-tapped so that Bethel be­comes the mod­el com­mu­ni­ty that is en­vi­sioned," Bak­er said."We al­so looked at part­ner­ing at the lev­el of the Bethel Em­pow­er­ment and Skills Train­ing Cen­tre and the cur­rent Youth Fa­cil­i­ty that is man­aged by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and these are note­wor­thy pos­tures."

Beck­les en­dorsed Bak­er's views, say­ing that un­em­ploy­ment was an is­sue in the Bethel com­mu­ni­ty and pro­grammes for pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion were need­ed to com­bat the prob­lem."We are look­ing at pover­ty in ques­tion...We are re­al­is­ing that ed­u­ca­tion is the first key to get­ting our peo­ple out of pover­ty," he said.

"But we al­so re­alise that han­dling un­em­ploy­ment is cru­cial, so we are go­ing to look at han­dling un­em­ploy­ment while we teach, while we train, while we ed­u­cate our folk for a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty and for a bet­ter To­ba­go," Beck­les said.