Shal­iza Has­sanali

"Ari­ma was bush." This re­mark made by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing on the draft Ari­ma Spa­tial De­vel­op­ment Plan cre­at­ed an up­roar among burgess­es, who felt the min­is­ter's com­ment was out of place and un­called for.

The plan, which seeks to im­prove the de­liv­ery of in­equities of so­cial and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture in Ari­ma, was rolled out to Ari­ma busi­ness­men and res­i­dents by Dr Ralph Hen­ry, of Kairi Con­sul­tants, and May­or Adri­an Cabralis at the Ari­ma Town Hall on Wednes­day. The is­sues to be ad­dressed in the plan, Hen­ry said, in­clud­ed traf­fic woes, in­ad­e­quate space for res­i­den­tial oc­cu­pa­tion, im­prove­ment in ser­vices and the con­struc­tion of a new mar­ket and hos­pi­tal. Man­ning, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress, urged the at­ten­dees that Ari­ma was their space and they should help carve and shape it in­to some­thing worth­while. Near­ing the end of the pro­gramme, peo­ple were in­vit­ed to give their views in an open dis­cus­sion, with Ari­ma busi­ness­man Roger Be­lix tak­ing the floor. Be­lix said he was not go­ing to sup­port the plan un­til a new hos­pi­tal was built. "My son died as a re­sult of a bro­ken leg. He's in his grave," an emo­tion­al Be­lix said. Then res­i­dent Garfield Daniel, the most vo­cif­er­ous in the group, asked Cabralis af­ter 56 years of serv­ing one po­lit­i­cal par­ty (PNM) what did the peo­ple have to show for it? "We are suf­fer­ing from poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion. There seems to be no dras­tic change even though we have a plan," com­plained Daniel.

Ris­ing from her seat, Man­ning of­fered to an­swer the ques­tion, stat­ing there were nev­er any re­gion­al plans in place in T&T. "In­stead of the coun­cil­lors do­ing what came nat­u­ral­ly we are now putting a plan­ning frame­work and pri­ori­tis­ing. I am now hear­ing that 56 years of noth­ing hap­pen­ing. And that can't be so, Ari­ma was bush," said Man­ning, prompt­ing some in the hall to raise their voic­es and hands in ob­jec­tion. "No! You tak­ing this too far," shout­ed one vis­i­bly up­set man. Re­al­is­ing the meet­ing was turn­ing in­to a noisy protest, Cabralis had to in­ter­vene. Man­ning who was tak­en by sur­prise by the peo­ple's re­ac­tion, hand­ed over the mi­cro­phone and took her seat. Short­ly af­ter the meet­ing end­ed.