On Box­ing Day 2006, the world came crash­ing down for the fam­i­ly of for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) coun­cil­lor Bert Al­lette, when he was shot dead, while walk­ing along Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont in Port-of-Spain.

The Bert Al­lette Park on Nor­folk Street, Bel­mont, stands in mem­o­ry to him, but over many years it has fall­en in­to a state of dis­re­pair, some­what of a re­minder of the gloom the Al­lette fam­i­ly would have felt af­ter the death of their rel­a­tive.

This was why May­or of Port-of-Spain, Chin­ua Al­leyne, in­vit­ed Al­lete’s son Ka­reem to wit­ness the sod-turn­ing for the re­con­struc­tion of the Bert Al­lette Park, which is be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Em­bassy of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in the Re­pub­lic of T&T, through the Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion.

“Bert Al­lette was the coun­cil­lor for this dis­trict Bel­mont North and South and dur­ing his term in of­fice he, un­for­tu­nate­ly, made the ul­ti­mate sac­ri­fice in see­ing to the needs of the peo­ple of his com­mu­ni­ty and the peo­ple of his city,” Al­leyne said.

The May­or ex­plained that while he was not part of the coun­cil back then, he was in school with the late coun­cil­lor’s son Ka­reem, Al­leyne said their re­la­tion­ship grew af­ter the tragedy.

He said he had home that the re­con­struc­tion would pro­vide a safe space for chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Am­bas­sador of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na to T&T Fang Qiu said al­though the two na­tions were ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly apart, they shared a mean­ing­ful bond that con­tributed to this coun­try’s so­cial and eco­nom­ic progress.

“We are unit­ed by a core prin­ci­ple that is both na­tions pri­ori­tise our peo­ple-cen­tred strat­e­gy in de­vel­op­ment and gov­er­nance, aim­ing to im­prove the wel­fare of our cit­i­zens through ad­vance­ment and growth,” he said.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port of Spain North/St. Ann’s West Stu­art Young de­scribed Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu as a tremen­dous sup­port­er of this coun­try.

“We in Port of Spain North/St. Ann’s West are par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py with his tenure, through the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na Em­bassy has sup­port­ed us with small steel bands, which are an im­por­tant el­e­ment of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

Young told Ka­reem that the park was a fit­ting trib­ute to the type of per­son/coun­cil­lor Bert Al­lette was, a gen­tle per­son.

“Crime is one of the is­sues we face and un­for­tu­nate­ly that is where he met his demise but he met it do­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and stand­ing up for his com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Young said projects like these made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in com­mu­ni­ties.