Shereen Ali

Many peo­ple sel­dom think about their lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors un­less a lo­cal drain gets clogged, or their road de­vel­ops a pot­hole so big that it has formed its own ecosys­tem, com­plete with breed­ing mos­qui­toes and green plant life.

But it's these ba­sic, es­sen­tial ser­vices–well-paved roads, func­tion­ing drains, clean streets free of garbage, well-main­tained recre­ation fields–that un­der­pin the qual­i­ty of life in many com­mu­ni­ties. It's these sim­ple ser­vices, well done, that Ed­win Good­ing is most proud of.

Good­ing is Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), which from Jan­u­ary 11-17 will cel­e­brate 25 years of be­ing a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty with a week of spe­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

Sit­ting be­hind his desk in a cheer­ful red shirt, Good­ing spoke to the T&T Guardian about the TPRC's achieve­ments and chal­lenges in the past year.

Good­ing has been at the helm of this east­ern cor­po­ra­tion for just over a year now, ever since com­ing in­to of­fice as the new chair­man, lead­ing a PNM-dom­i­nat­ed coun­cil af­ter Oc­to­ber 2013's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

Even though 12 of the coun­cil's 15 mem­bers are PNM (the re­main­ing three are COP and ILP mem­bers), Good­ing said the coun­cil has "al­ways been eq­ui­table in how we treat with every­one. We would nev­er think of with­hold­ing sup­port from (non-PNM) coun­cil mem­bers," he said.

He said the fair­ness of how things are de­cid­ed and done is one of the cor­po­ra­tion's achieve­ments in the past year. "We do not pick sides; we do not say: the 12 PNM coun­cil­lors will get more. Every­body is treat­ed as an equal coun­cil mem­ber....So when you come here, we can­not at that point say we're go­ing to with­hold sup­port from some peo­ple be­cause they didn't vote for us. To me that is old-time pol­i­tics. The coun­cil­lors here will vouch for that�their ex­pec­ta­tions were proven wrong; we came in with that ap­proach: equal across the board. If we get $1,000, it is di­vid­ed in 15 and every­body gets a piece of $1,000; that is how we op­er­ate here."

Main­tain­ing clean com­mu­ni­ties

"The cor­po­ra­tion is not a glam­orous job," Good­ing ad­mit­ted.

"It is re­al­ly here to sat­is­fy the ba­sic needs of our burgess­es. But what we con­sid­er ba­sic, turns out to be very crit­i­cal and im­por­tant: health, well­ness, to en­sure drains are cleaned, con­trol­ling mos­qui­toes, prop­er roads to dri­ve on, well-main­tained recre­ation grounds for peo­ple to play in; ceme­ter­ies for buri­als...In the past year we have tried to en­sure that those un­spec­tac­u­lar func­tions and du­ties were per­formed to the best of our abil­i­ty," said Good­ing.

"This year, for­tu­nate­ly let me knock on wood�we did not have a large amount of flood­ing in the area," said Good­ing, "... be­cause we did what we were sup­posed to do, which was to clean our drains, and we got on top of the min­istries of Works and Wa­ter Re­sources who are re­spon­si­ble for the larg­er drains and rivers and wa­ter­cours­es, to en­sure these were kept clear so that wa­ters could flow in­to the sea. We did that proac­tive­ly," said Good­ing.

Wel­come place for mor­ein­vest­ment

"The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co re­gion is the most di­verse: we have the air­port, the uni­ver­si­ty, a hos­pi­tal, we have the most schools, we have light man­u­fac­tur­ing," said Good­ing.

"What I would like to see is a burgess not hav­ing to leave their area to con­tribute to the traf­fic that gets cre­at­ed when every­body heads in­to Port-of-Spain. I would like to see that the jobs cre­at­ed in the re­gion are suf­fi­cient to have peo­ple live and work in the re­gion," said Good­ing.

To do that will re­quire sup­port for busi­ness peo­ple, to en­cour­age more of them to in­vest, he said.

Good­ing cit­ed two cur­rent ex­am­ples of the kind of busi­ness in­vest­ment he loves to see in his mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty: the new Massy Stores Su­per­centre (cor­ner of Tis­sue Dri­ve and Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way at Trinci­ty), a Ram­co Group project, which Good­ing says "has promised to bring 600 new jobs in­to this area," and a Bhag­wans­ingh project go­ing up in the same area, which, he said, would al­so bring jobs.

Says Good­ing: "That is what we like to see. We want to at­tract those kinds of projects that will pro­vide jobs, bring a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for our burgess­es, and give them greater choice."

Chal­lenges: from con­tracts to time­ly fund­ing

But he con­ced­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion has had its share of chal­lenges.

One chal­lenge has to do with mon­i­tor­ing de­liv­ery on some con­tract jobs: for in­stance, one con­tract with an open-truck trash col­lec­tor - a four-days-a-week con­tract to col­lect yard trash � has met crit­i­cism from some area res­i­dents who say they have rarely ac­tu­al­ly seen the truck. The cor­po­ra­tion is ad­dress­ing this.

A much big­ger chal­lenge is how the PNM-dom­i­nat­ed coun­cil works with the UNC-led cen­tral gov­ern­ment, which con­trols the purse-strings. It rais­es is­sues of the need for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, to al­low mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies greater au­ton­o­my in con­trol­ling bud­gets for at least some of their own lo­cal needs, no mat­ter who is in pow­er at gov­ern­ment lev­el.

"The big chal­lenge for us in the past year was how we worked with cen­tral gov­ern­ment," said Good­ing, "... and there is an is­sue that is cur­rent � it be­wil­ders me why it is still cur­rent. It is a mat­ter where one of our garbage con­trac­tors took le­gal ac­tion against the cor­po­ra­tion and levied on us and took away six of our ve­hi­cles. This hap­pened in late Sep­tem­ber 2014.

"...The con­flict was over an amount in 2009 claimed by the con­trac­tor, which was re­fut­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion, and was nev­er dealt with. The [new] sit­ting coun­cil came in here in No­vem­ber 2013; for the year that we've been here, this mat­ter was nev­er brought to the at­ten­tion of our coun­cil by man­age­ment. So we did not even have a chance at that point in time to take the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion," he said.

"When you have a judge­ment from the court, you have to have a re­al­ly good ba­sis to have that judge­ment over­turned, and we went to the gov­ern­ment line min­is­ter and told them what the prob­lem was, and sought ap­proval to pay this mon­ey.

"They have met every week since the end of Sep­tem­ber; every week they've met, and they've re­ferred this mat­ter again and again and again...That has been a chal­lenge," said Good­ing.

Good­ing be­lieves the de­lay in ap­prov­ing monies is "un­nec­es­sary... It is just they have not dealt with it, so that we have had to rent ve­hi­cles, be­cause our day-to-day rou­tine op­er­a­tions were af­fect­ed."

"For­tu­nate­ly, it has not af­fect­ed us serv­ing our burgess­es, apart from dur­ing the flood­ing, when the staff had to use their own ve­hi­cles to bring re­lief to af­fect­ed burgess­es, since they had tak­en away two of our Dis­as­ter Unit ve­hi­cles....They took SUV ve­hi­cles used in couri­er ser­vices, and they took two pick­ups from the Dis­as­ter Unit," he ex­plained.

"This is now three months–Oc­to­ber, No­vem­ber, De­cem­ber–where an ac­tion to sim­ply ap­prove, the funds are avail­able in the cor­po­ra­tion, so it is an act to ap­prove the pay­ment (to sat­is­fy the judge­ment/pay the con­trac­tor) that is be­ing with­held."

Good­ing said that cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, through their in­ac­tion, was in ef­fect putting TPRC as­sets at fur­ther risk, be­cause the con­trac­tors could de­cide to re­cov­er their mon­ey by tak­ing more as­sets from the TPRC in the fu­ture.

"It is the burgess­es who will suf­fer at the end of the day," not­ed Good­ing.

Wish list for the New Year

Look­ing to the fu­ture, TPRC Chair­man Good­ing hoped for sev­er­al things to help the re­gion de­vel­op more ra­tio­nal­ly, in­clud­ing zon­ing and bet­ter traf­fic plan­ning.

"We would like to see the Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co re­gion de­vel­op in terms of its in­fra­struc­ture, its zon­ing, and its build­ing code," he said.

He sees the need for im­ple­men­ta­tion (and en­force­ment) of a zon­ing pol­i­cy across all land use mat­ters � in­clud­ing lo­ca­tion of schools, com­mer­cial dis­tricts, and busi­ness places � to avoid the chaos of any­one build­ing any­thing they want, any­where:

"You know, peo­ple build struc­tures on the pave­ments, peo­ple set up garages all over the place, and then the EMA says that if it was there be­fore four years, they can't do any­thing about it...", he start­ed to ex­plain.

Shift­ing to the prob­lem of huge af­ter-school traf­fic jams on the East­ern Main Road due to the large num­ber of schools in this re­gion, Good­ing al­so called for bet­ter traf­fic man­age­ment.

Good­ing would es­pe­cial­ly like to see some re­al lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form be en­act­ed, be­cause this would help de­cen­tralise pow­er as well as make lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives more ac­count­able to con­stituents from the area.

"We would like to get more au­ton­o­my in lo­cal gov­ern­ment, in terms of a bud­get that we can con­trol," he said.

"Re­mem­ber, we are re­spon­si­ble for all of our burgess­es, yet still we have to wait un­til the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment gives us the go-ahead. We get a bud­get, but yet still, we have to go down to the line min­is­ter, and that takes a hell of a long time to get things re­leased... Some­times ex­pe­di­en­cy is re­quired, but you can't act, be­cause you have to write a whole long epis­tle to go to a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary who has to take it to the min­is­ter, and in­vari­ably it has to go to Cab­i­net..."

"This is the sys­tem now. This is noth­ing new, it is the sys­tem.... which we need to re­form. We need more pow­er for lo­cal gov­ern­ment, and al­so more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty....The same way a min­is­ter is ac­count­able to the Gov­ern­ment or to the peo­ple for spend­ing mon­ey, we, too want to be ac­count­able.... We don't have the abil­i­ty to re­spond quick­ly to things that are hap­pen­ing lo­cal­ly on the ground. We don't have that."

Good­ing em­pha­sised that it wasn't about want­i­ng to­tal pow­er for any lo­cal gov­ern­ment body:

"You know, some­times if you want to give some­body the au­thor­i­ty to do some­thing, you don't give them the full gamut and say: 'Do what you want.' If you are re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing it bet­ter for peo­ple, for the burgess­es, you can say: 'Well, you see these 20 things here, right now we de­cide what you do. But you see these 15 or these 12? They have di­rect im­pact on your burgess­es; we will give you au­thor­i­ty there, with­in that scope.' That is the kind of prac­ti­cal re­form we need."

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion

Week of Ac­tiv­i­ties: Jan­u­ary 11 � 17

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The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) is 25 years old. For­mer­ly part of the St George East Coun­ty Coun­cil un­til Act 21 of 1990 made it in­to its own mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, it cov­ers over 527 sq km and is one of the largest of T&T's 14 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, ex­tend­ing from St Joseph in the west to Waller­field in the east, and from Blan­chisseuse in the north to Cunu­pia in the south.

The TPRC in­cludes 71 dis­tinct lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Curepe, St Au­gus­tine, Trinci­ty, Tacarigua, Bras­so Seco, La La­ja and the Heights of Gua­napo. It spans some im­por­tant scenic, cul­tur­al, trans­port and ed­u­ca­tion­al sites, in­clud­ing Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, The Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre, Cau­ra Val­ley, and the San­ta Rosa Rark.

The cor­po­ra­tion's re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude re­pair and up­keep of com­mu­ni­ty roads, bridges, cemetaries, recre­ation grounds, mar­kets and drains (flood mit­i­ga­tion is part of its job). Clear­ing wa­ter­cours­es, col­lect­ing garbage, cut­ting grass, con­trol­ling pests (in­clud­ing mos­qui­toes and ro­dents) is all part of a day's work, as is the in­spec­tion of food premis­es, im­mu­ni­sa­tion pro­grammes, the pro­cess­ing of build­ing plans and the emp­ty­ing of cesspits. It al­so main­tains build­ings and dis­trib­utes truck-borne wa­ter. It does its work through a labour de­part­ment, a build­ing in­spec­torate de­part­ment, and de­part­ments of en­gi­neer­ing, lo­cal health and a small Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit.

To cel­e­brate the TPRC mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, the cor­po­ra­tion has planned a week of ac­tiv­i­ties start­ing from Jan­u­ary 11.

AC­TIV­I­TIES

Sun­day 11: Mul­tire­li­gious ser­vice, Tu­na­puna RC Church (morn­ing); fol­lowed by street pa­rade with Scouts, Po­lice Band and oth­ers; fol­lowed a fam­i­ly day for TPRC staff at Con­stan­tine Park

Mon­day 12: Tea with Chris Gar­cia: A spe­cial treat for 75 se­nior cit­i­zens cho­sen from all ar­eas in the TPRC

Tues­day 13: Busi­ness break­fast, part­nered with the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of Com­merce

Wednes­day 14: Health Fair, for TPRC staff and the pub­lic. Free eye tests, blood sug­ar tests and more

Fri­day 16: Civic re­cep­tion and awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Vay­ber­ri on the Greens restau­rant (for­mer­ly Mus­co­v­a­do restau­rant), Mil­le­ni­um Lakes Golf and Coun­try Club, Trinci­ty.

Sat­ur­day 17: 12-5 pm: Art in the Park at Au­zonville Park, Tu­na­puna; emerg­ing young artists paint; pub­lic is wel­come. 5 pm � mid­night: Street par­ty and fes­ti­val. Steel­bands Ex­o­dus, Bird­song and Curepe Scherzan­do to play; so­ca artistes in­clude Olatun­ji, De­stra, Crazy and Ben­jai; street area from Au­zonville Road up to Freel­ing Street will be cor­doned off for the event; se­lect­ed food ven­dors from each area will be sell­ing food; rov­ing tas­sa band and Car­ni­val char­ac­ters.