Malis­sa Lara

Some un­em­ployed youths in the Cau­ra/Par­adise/Tacarigua dis­tricts, com­plain­ing about dif­fi­cul­ties they face find­ing jobs, have be­gun to turn to al­co­hol to pass the time, ac­cord­ing to coun­cil­lor for the area, Prakash Barath. Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian last week at his of­fice on Goya Road, El Do­ra­do, Barath said: "Cau­ra is very close to me. As a young boy, I would fre­quent Cau­ra and the prob­lems of Cau­ra need to be ad­dressed. Em­ploy­ment is one," he said.

Barath, who said there were no pro­grammes for young peo­ple in that area, in­tends to get work done in that re­gard. He said suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have done stud­ies on Cau­ra but noth­ing has come to pass.

"I am say­ing that it's time. Un­der my tenure, I in­tend to do some se­ri­ous work and get some ac­tion in terms of Cau­ra," he promis­es. But it's not on­ly the youth who have been af­fect­ed by the lack of de­vel­op­ment in the vil­lage. Barath said the prob­lem of un­em­ploy­ment af­fects adults as well. Though some res­i­dents are farm­ers, Barath said many of the farm­ers do not live in Cau­ra, thus em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties are rare. The sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened as the agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads are in­ad­e­quate. "The farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty has been so af­fect­ed that peo­ple have to park their ve­hi­cles, be­cause the roads are so bad, and walk miles to bring their goods out," he said.

Vil­lagers not ben­e­fit­ing

Though Cau­ra is a beau­ti­ful vil­lage, Barath said, the tourist at­trac­tions do not ben­e­fit the vil­lagers, who he said, some­times live day-to-day. "The ben­e­fits of tourism are not be­ing fil­tered down to the vil­lagers. If they are giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work as guides they will read­i­ly ac­cept it," Barath said. Barath said he has re­ceived sup­port from Tu­na­puna MP, Win­ston Dook­er­an and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man, Khadi­jah Ameen. He sug­gest­ed eco-tourism as an op­tion and in­stalling toi­let fa­cil­i­ties and cook­ing spaces to up­grade the area. Barath said he was told that some parts of Cau­ra take wa­ter di­rect­ly from the riv­er. He did not wish to men­tion what comes out of the res­i­dents' taps.

"Peo­ple can't be drink­ing dirty wa­ter," he said. There is al­so no com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in Cau­ra so there is nowhere for res­i­dents to come to­geth­er. Barath said par­ents in Cau­ra can­not af­ford to send their pre-school­ers to a pri­vate school but they have been un­able to use the La Goya kinder­garten. "There are sev­en chil­dren who are pre-school age. La Goya has been com­mis­sioned but they were told there is a two-mile ra­dius for the in­take," he said.

Liv­ing like strangers

Goya Road, El Do­ra­do al­so has a grow­ing prob­lem. Along with some vi­o­lent El Do­ra­do East stu­dents who at­tack res­i­dents, Barath said there are hous­ing de­vel­op­ments with­in the com­mu­ni­ty but the two com­mu­ni­ties live like strangers. That stu­dent prob­lem may soon be fixed as the school has reached out to him and the res­i­dents to re-build their re­la­tion­ship. How­ev­er, res­i­dents of La Goya Es­tate, which he said was oc­cu­pied two years ago, have not blend­ed in well.

He said those in the de­vel­op­ment were dis­placed from one area and have not yet bond­ed with El Do­ra­do res­i­dents. Say­ing the youths in the de­vel­op­ment were al­so rest­less, Barath said, "we need to break the ice". There­fore he plans to have a fam­i­ly day in the hope of bridg­ing that gap.