Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With the in­crease in traf­fic penal­ties set to com­mence to­day, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says the pub­lic has noth­ing to fear if they obey the laws.

Asked by re­porters in Pi­paro yes­ter­day for a re­sponse to com­plaints by some mem­bers of the pub­lic that the fines were in­creas­ing, yet the roads re­main in a de­plorable con­di­tion, John said, “What come first, the chick­en or the egg?”

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens were law-abid­ing.

“I know peo­ple dri­ve dan­ger­ous­ly, not every­body, I want to ar­gue that the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion are very law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, and the few that lean to­ward reck­less­ness, we can’t al­low them to spoil the place for every­body else.”

John said every­one would agree that bet­ter can be done, but that re­quires lead­er­ship.

“You can’t vote for change and ex­pect ex­change. So, what you vote for is change, and part of that change is how you in­ter­pret it. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment, we in­ter­pret change led by the Prime Min­is­ter, is that we have to have or­der, and or­der means how we con­duct our­selves and how it im­pacts our fel­low cit­i­zens.”

She added, “We are say­ing obey the laws, and re­al­ly and tru­ly you don’t have to fear any­thing.”

John, who was speak­ing at Robert­son Hill, which was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged due to in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty at the mud vol­cano, said the Gov­ern­ment was ad­dress­ing the needs of all com­mu­ni­ties, not just in Pi­paro.

She said the min­istry, through its Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve, had re­cruit­ed 1,000 peo­ple thus far.

“The min­istry is work­ing day and night. Come mid-Jan­u­ary, they would be go­ing in­to com­mu­ni­ties to fix pot­holes. We have the da­ta and, in some com­mu­ni­ties, have 2,000 pot­holes...we com­ing in to patch the 2,000 pot­holes.”

The min­is­ter did not spec­i­fy any spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty as she said no com­mu­ni­ty was im­mune from ter­ri­ble road con­di­tions.

“We ad­mit it is a mess, but now it is my mess, and ba­si­cal­ly it is my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to solve that prob­lem... It is haz­ard, it’s ex­pen­sive, the wear and tear on peo­ple’s cars.”

Com­ment­ing on the trag­ic death of eight-year-old Gideon Smart, who was crushed by a run­away truck, John said it was heart­break­ing.

While she was un­clear about the cir­cum­stances of the ac­ci­dent, she said peo­ple must be mind­ful of how they dri­ve.

“There is a lev­el of law­less­ness,” she said, adding that there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty.

She al­so not­ed that the year has end­ed with a 50 per cent de­crease in crime.

The min­is­ter urged peo­ple to de­sist from lit­ter­ing, not­ing that about 150 bags of lit­ter were re­cent­ly re­moved from the Pi­paro com­mu­ni­ty.