SAN JUAN

San Juan is nes­tled be­tween Barataria and Saint Joseph.

The town is gov­erned by the San Juan–Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and is the first ma­jor stop along the East-West Cor­ri­dor for maxi-taxis and bus­es.

The Croisee is a trans­porta­tion hub for route taxis to Aranguez, El So­cor­ro, San­ta Cruz, Port-of-Spain and along the East­ern Main Raod. The Pri­or­i­ty Mall serves as a bus ter­mi­nal for the town.

There is a banker's row in San Juan, large cor­po­rate re­tail busi­ness­es have es­tab­lished their pres­ence in the area,

a lo­cal bev­er­age com­pa­ny's op­er­a­tions are in the town, lo­cal and for­eign fast-food fran­chis­es have al­so set up shop, as well as su­per­mar­kets, car-parts busi­ness­es, hard­ware shops, pubs, bars fast-food restau­rants and itin­er­ant ven­dors. The icon­ic San Juan Mar­ket is promi­nent on the land­scape and the San Juan Prom­e­nade is the town's an­swer to the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade as a place to hang out or lime where peo­ple can en­joy the var­i­ous groups' free open-air per­for­mances. The no­tice­able down­sides are the home­less and the traf­fic.

ARANGUEZ

The farm­ers in Aranguez have made the area known as the food bas­ket of Trinidad with the wide va­ri­ety and quan­ti­ty of crops they pro­duce in the rich, arable land.

The area was rav­aged by Trop­i­cal Storm Karen last Sun­day and many farm­ers lost the bulk of their pro­duce while res­i­dents ex­pe­ri­enced flood dam­age along with oth­er peo­ple through­out the coun­try.

Aranguez is home to one of the coun­try's most pop­u­lar sa­van­nahs, Aranguez Sa­van­nah, it hosts ma­jor cel­e­bra­tions and events in­clud­ing Holi, Di­wali, Eid al-Fitr, Hosay, Car­ni­val, crick­et and foot­ball games, and The Samaan Tree Rock Fes­ti­val among many oth­er live con­certs.

The MTS Plaza in Aranguez is the home of the San Juan-Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

The tra­di­tion­al face of Aranguez of farm­ing, fresh fruit and veg­etable shops and gar­den sup­ply and flower shops has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with rapid in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and ur­ban­i­sa­tion.

Au­to re­pair shops, su­per­mar­kets, fast food restau­rants and out­lets, ware­hous­es, com­pa­nies, gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, apart­ment com­plex­es, malls and hous­es are the new kids on the block.

This rapid de­vel­op­ment comes at a price in traf­fic and crime.

As Bud­get Day Oc­to­ber 7 looms ever near­er, Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ar­eas on Wednes­day to hear what the res­i­dents want­ed.

Aranguez

Hami­da Mo­hammed:

Right now crime is the num­ber one agen­da, the flood­ing in Aranguez is hor­ren­dous. I have a gar­den, my daugh­ter and son-in-law are both farm­ers.

Last year they lost every­thing, they re­ceived no com­pen­sa­tion, this year they lost every­thing again, and it's hap­pen­ing over and over. Food prices are sky-high. I would like to see farm­ers get some­thing back of what they lost.

We're talk­ing about the food bas­ket of Trinidad. When things go up in the mar­ket, you want to know what's go­ing on if you don't com­pen­sate the farm­ers.

Re­mem­ber they have to pay for chem­i­cals, fer­tilis­ers, top­soil, equip­ment, all are very ex­pen­sive,

By cut­ting down on the school feed­ing pro­gramme, we have to get up and make break­fast and lunch for them. If they could feed pris­on­ers, why can't they feed the school chil­dren?

You have so many young moth­ers around who have to hus­tle to go to work in the morn­ings, pre­pare break­fast and lunch, pay for a babysit­ter, it would be nice if the chil­dren get one meal at school at least.

Arizaa Mo­hammed:

I want to see min­i­mum wage in­creased be­cause it's very low, it's very hard to sur­vive and ad­dress the un­em­ploy­ment is­sue. I am qual­i­fied in dif­fer­ent fields, and peo­ple don't want to hire be­cause they don't have the fund­ing to pay peo­ple ad­e­quate­ly. GATE and the lap­top pro­gramme should al­so be brought back as well.

Kayra Jules:

Right now I'm try­ing to sal­vage any crops, but it's not look­ing pos­si­ble since Karen.

Any com­pen­sa­tion would be wel­come. I don't know what is go­ing on with this ad­min­is­tra­tion here, but farm­ers are get­ting the short end of the stick.

They're not clean­ing the drains in the dry sea­son and res­i­dents are not see­ing a coun­cil­lor walk­ing around.

When the rain comes, farm­ers can't do any­thing, we just watch our pro­duce per­ish.

It comes like farm­ers could on­ly plant for half of the year and the next half they have to look for a job.

As the rain sets up, every­body gets fright­ened, as they see two clouds in the sky, they get scared.

I would like to see more help and as­sis­tance giv­en to farm­ers when it comes to flood and dam­ages due to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. It's not the fault of farm­ers; they're try­ing their best.

I have to buy a lap­top for my daugh­ter now. She was sup­posed to get one in Form One but didn't be­cause the ad­min­is­tra­tion changed.

The cheap­est one right now is about $2,900 to $3,000. They need it in school for CXC now, to do SEA, use a flash dri­ve and a print­er. I would like this pro­gramme re­turned.

Hema Rag­bir:

Flood­ing is one of the biggest prob­lems in Aranguez. My neigh­bours and rel­a­tives got hit hard. The Gar­dens suf­fered bad­ly.

The school feed­ing pro­gramme and lap­top pro­gramme are a must, we are in the dig­i­tal age, chil­dren need bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion.

They should in­crease the grant for pen­sion­ers and al­so the dis­abil­i­ty grant.

Every­thing is too ex­pen­sive now, that mon­ey my fa­ther is get­ting as a pen­sion­er comes like noth­ing be­cause of the high food prices and cost of liv­ing.

My car is by the garage be­cause of the bad roads, they're in a mess, we need bet­ter roads and in­fra­struc­ture.

Shawn Saddnag­im:

They could bring back the lap­top pro­gramme and school book grant be­cause school books are very ex­pen­sive, that would be nice. They should fo­cus more on the en­vi­ron­ment, come down hard on lit­ter­ing and pay more at­ten­tion to flood­ing. Spend more mon­ey on dredg­ing of rivers, and main­tain­ing nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es. I want to see more mon­ey go­ing there. The area got hit re­al­ly bad, I didn't get touched be­cause of my flood­gate I was saved, my neigh­bours had to burst a hole in a wall to let the wa­ter out.

Fa­reeza Mo­han:

I want to see a bet­ter health care sys­tem, crime is not so bad around here, more mon­ey should be spent on the en­vi­ron­ment al­so. Prop­er drainage here will help a lot. Ed­u­ca­tion must come af­ter health, the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty.

Chanan Ma­hase:

I want to see a low­er crime rate and a de­crease in food­stuff prices. It usu­al­ly floods around here, any­time the San Juan riv­er ris­es, it over­flows and we get the worse of it.

I could al­so do with a pen­sion in­crease and NIS al­so.

San Juan

Hazel-Ann Byam-Charles:

For the el­der­ly peo­ple who are liv­ing by them­selves, who need a litle as­sis­tance, at least they could give them a lit­tle more in their pen­sion or NIS.

At the end of the day what lit­tle mon­ey they have is used to pay for their home, med­ica­tion, ba­sic food­stuff, they don't have any­thing left.

The home­less are get­ting food from good Samar­i­tans. I come out some­times and give them too. They need to have a spe­cial place to cook food and dis­trib­ute through­out the coun­try to as­sist them.

Not every par­ent can af­ford to see about their chil­dren fi­nan­cial­ly, many women are sin­gle par­ents, many fa­thers are not as­sist­ing; they should urge them to con­tribute to the house­hold.

A spe­cial pro­gramme to re­turn books to schools for the next set of stu­dents to use should be set up.

Have ex­perts to see about the flood­ing sit­u­a­tion, every­body can as­sist one an­oth­er, some peo­ple, how­ev­er, would just sit down and de­pend on the Gov­ern­ment to do every­thing for them.

I am 51 years old, I try my best to as­sist and do as much I could do as a par­ent. I passed through a hard life al­ready but I will still help those in need.

Some moth­ers have to hold down two or three jobs, they could at least add a lit­tle some­thing more to our pay. Some­times when we fin­ish pay­ing wa­ter and light bills, we have to buy food for our chil­dren, come back and look for clothes for them, things for our­selves, some­times we do with­out.

When they do the Bud­get, I hope that every­body could at least get a lit­tle some­thing from it.

David Gomez:

I would like to see bet­ter wages for the lit­tle man who is work­ing hard and bring the econ­o­my to a bet­ter state with sub­stan­tial em­ploy­ment and bet­ter work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties. We have jobs you know, but look at what is go­ing on; we're get­ting fired. It's a game be­cause when we get a job af­ter work­ing re­al hard for nine months, we get­ting re­trenched, they don't want to pay gra­tu­ity, ben­e­fits, and hol­i­day mon­ey.

Con­trac­tors are reap­ing the ben­e­fit of that.

Tayeisha Gar­cia:

I want to see OJT mon­ey go up by at least 40 per cent. I al­so want to see the San Juan Prom­e­nade clean at all times, the home­less peo­ple out of the prom­e­nade, not sleep­ing on the ground and a suit­able place to house them.

Samuel Jack:

I want to see bet­ter­ment for old­er folks, young peo­ple and the chil­dren of our na­tion. Try and clean up their act and to pro­vide for peo­ple. Straight­en out every­thing, so we won't have these kinds of prob­lems and sit­u­a­tions in the coun­try.

Too much poor peo­ple are suf­fer­ing.

Rad­hi­ca Ma­haraj:

I want to see bet­ter­ment for the coun­try. Gov­ern­ment has to do some­thing about crime. There are too many mur­ders tak­ing place. I want Gov­ern­ment to take more in­ter­est in poor peo­ple, with flood­ing, a lot of peo­ple don't have a job, they're suf­fer­ing right now for med­i­cine and all these things.

Even though I'm a pen­sion­er, I'm okay, but some­times it is hard with bills to pay.

I would like to see a grant in­crease to help the less for­tu­nate and al­so a dis­abil­i­ty grant.

My daugh­ter is a teacher, many chil­dren are suf­fer­ing be­cause of cut­backs, they are not get­ting enough mon­ey to prop­er­ly take care of them.

She told me she some­times us­es mon­ey from her own pock­et to help the chil­dren. I will help peo­ple who are less for­tu­nate, I try to give peo­ple what I can af­ford. I feel sor­ry for peo­ple.