Shas­tri Boodan

Ex­pect to see a clean­er Ma­yaro in the com­ing months says Ma­yaro MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters. The beach­es in the area's most fre­quent­ed bathing spots re­ceived a much-need­ed facelift, dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's Clean and Beau­ti­fy T&T dri­ve re­cent­ly. Tonnes of the garbage from the beach were re­moved, but lit­ter­bugs were still leav­ing be­hind plas­tic bot­tles, box­es and oth­er forms of non-biodegrad­able mat­ter.

There are al­so nu­mer­ous mange-cov­ered stray dogs on the beach­es.

Speak­ing with the Guardian on Wednes­day, Pe­ters said now that the PP Gov­ern­ment had con­trol of the Rio-Claro/Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, greater ef­forts would be made in restor­ing the area to its once pris­tine glo­ry. Pe­ters said any moves to push tourism and im­prove ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture would be done in con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple.

He added that he would be look­ing at get­ting per­ma­nent gangs to pa­trol and keep the beach­es clean and im­prove tourist fa­cil­i­ties in the area.

He said for too long the PNM had ne­glect­ed the tourism po­ten­tial of the beach­es lo­cat­ed in south­ern Trinidad. Pe­ters said do­mes­tic tourism could well dri­ve the econ­o­my of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vide much-need­ed em­ploy­ment.

He added that there was al­so a lot of po­ten­tial for de­vel­op­ing the beach­es in the Guayagua­yare area that are now un­der­utilised. He said there was a greater need for a cam­paign to ed­u­cate na­tion­als so they could keep the en­vi­ron­ment clean. Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist David Grana­do said he would like to see the beach gangs come on stream as soon as pos­si­ble. He said many un­scrupu­lous peo­ple sim­ply use the beach as a dump. Grana­do said he would like to see more po­lice pa­trols in the area and roads lead­ing to the beach paved. He added that the peo­ple of Ma­yaro were more than will­ing to work with the PP Gov­ern­ment to achieve any ob­jec­tive that would ben­e­fit their com­mu­ni­ty. Grana­do said for too long Ma­yaro had been ne­glect­ed.

About the cor­po­ra­tion

The Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion came in­to be­ing with Act No. 21 of 1990, and its Amend­ment Act No. 8 of 1992. The Cor­po­ra­tion has a land area of 852.81 km� and is head­quar­tered in Rio Claro. and serves a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 36,000 per­sons.