Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of com­mu­ni­ty groups in Ma­yaro/ Guayagua­yare have made a stir­ring ap­peal for a joint ap­proach from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors to cap­i­talise on vi­able op­por­tu­ni­ties to trans­form the south-east com­mu­ni­ty in­to a prime tourist des­ti­na­tion.

This was one of the main pro­pos­als ad­vanced by in­ter­est groups to gen­er­ate a more bal­anced eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the re­gion dur­ing a Part­ner­ship Con­ver­sa­tion with top rep­re­sen­ta­tives of en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP T&T.

"If we are talk­ing about sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, we have to brand Ma­yaro prop­er­ly. We have a unique en­vi­ron­ment which we have not ex­ploit­ed to our ad­van­tage. Oth­er than oil and gas, we have a lot to of­fer, es­pe­cial­ly in the field of tourism. We have to look at all our op­tions if we re­al­ly want to move for­ward," said Tesi­la Ma­noe, a mem­ber of the Ma­yaro Past Pupils As­so­ci­a­tion (MP­PA) and a bpTT Brighter Prospects grad­u­ate.

A re­lease from BP said the dis­cus­sion which was held at the Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre (MRC) on May 29, fo­cused on feed­back from com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives on a bpTT ini­tia­tive to bring all com­mu­ni­ty groups un­der one um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion and the im­pact of the com­pa­ny's so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes in the re­gion.

The bpTT team was led by re­gion­al pres­i­dent Nor­man Christie and in­clud­ed Giselle Thomp­son, vice pres­i­dent, Cor­po­rate Op­er­a­tions; Ron­da Fran­cis, man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty; Joel Primus, Gov­ern­ment and Stake­hold­er Re­la­tions ad­vis­er; Keneisha Prince, man­ag­er, bpTT Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre; and Matthew Pierre, com­mu­ni­ty li­ai­son of­fi­cer.

Com­mu­ni­ty in­ter­ests rep­re­sent­ed at the dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tion, sports, cul­ture, the en­vi­ron­ment, fish­er­folk, Fire Ser­vice, the Coast Guard, non-gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Christie told the gath­er­ing that bpTT, whose home com­mu­ni­ty is Ma­yaro, want­ed to get "a true sense of what's hap­pen­ing on the ground" and to get per­son­al feed­back on the ef­fec­tive­ness of the com­pa­ny's di­verse range of so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes.

The re­lease said com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives praised bpTT for its pos­i­tive in­ter­ven­tion in a di­verse range of projects and pro­grammes and for spear­head­ing the ini­tia­tive to cre­ate one um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"The con­cept of an um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion to give Ma­yaro a sense of in­de­pen­dence and em­pow­er­ment is work­ing very well. It is a great ini­tia­tive. It al­lows us to chart our own way for­ward and em­pow­ers us to do things for our­selves. For too long we have grown to ac­cept a de­pen­den­cy syn­drome in Ma­yaro," said Dex­ter Dou­glas, ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary, Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare Un­em­ployed Or­gan­i­sa­tion & Con­cerned Cit­i­zens.

Dou­glas, who is al­so pres­i­dent of the Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School PTA, said it was "high time for us to say how we can im­prove our com­mu­ni­ty, work­ing side-by-side with the cor­po­rate sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment".

Par­tic­i­pants agreed that Ma­yaro had been po­si­tioned as a prime tourism des­ti­na­tion for a long while but lament­ed that lit­tle had been done to reach that sta­tus. They felt that the fish­ing in­dus­try could spawn a wide range of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties to at­tract lo­cal and for­eign vis­i­tors. The rivers and ocean front lend them­selves to ex­cit­ing wa­ter sports and there was great po­ten­tial for na­ture trails, sight-see­ing, a board­walk, jog­ging and sports tourism.

Andy Thomas, Pres­i­dent of Il­lu­sions Sports In­ter­na­tion­al, said there was a grow­ing need to train a cadre of qual­i­fied coach­es, ref­er­ees and oth­er of­fi­cials to de­vel­op the var­i­ous sport­ing dis­ci­plines in Ma­yaro. BPTT was al­so com­mend­ed for spon­sor­ing Ma­yaro's foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, net­ball and wind­ball crick­et leagues.

In clos­ing the dis­cus­sion, Christie thanked the com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives for their "frank and open views" on bpTT's on-go­ing so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes and their forth­right ap­proach to the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the wider Ma­yaro-Guayagua­yare re­gion.

"We are priv­i­leged to be stew­ards of our oil and gas re­sources. But our first priv­i­lege is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­vel­op ful­ly our hu­man re­sources, our great­est na­tion­al as­set.

"I have every con­fi­dence it can be done here in Ma­yaro," the bpTT re­gion­al pres­i­dent told the com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

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