Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons are scep­ti­cal about the Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee’s abil­i­ty to make a mean­ing­ful change to their com­mu­ni­ties.

One Laven­tille res­i­dent who did not want to be named told Guardian Me­dia, “We have to wait and see. I saw a piece on TV6 or CNC3 last night and it ain’t sound­ing too promis­ing.”

He said he was un­aware of any work the com­mit­tee was en­gaged in.

One woman, iden­ti­fied as Lin­da, said she too did not have faith in any fruit­ful re­sults based on the at­tempts made pre­vi­ous­ly.

“It’s a good idea but year come year go, elec­tion come, elec­tion go, they are say­ing that but Laven­tille still the same,” she said.

“I’m 53 years of age and the Laven­tille in the same po­si­tion (as it al­ways was).”

Over in Beetham Gar­dens, res­i­dent and ac­tivist Ka­reem Mar­celle de­scribed the com­mit­tee as “a bril­liant ini­tia­tive” and said he was aware of the com­mit­tee’s con­sul­ta­tions with res­i­dents.

But af­ter be­ing in ex­is­tence for al­most five months, he not­ed he was “yet to see any­thing rolled out in prac­ti­cal­i­ty in these com­mu­ni­ties”

“I think that that is un­for­tu­nate,” he said.

Mar­celle was cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic about the com­mit­tee’s abil­i­ty to come up with so­lu­tions to the mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ty’s is­sues, how­ev­er, he not­ed there need­ed to be just as much em­pha­sis placed on the ex­e­cu­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the find­ings. He al­so be­lieved res­i­dents’ need­ed to see some re­sults in the short-term.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, the com­mit­tee’s chair­man An­tho­ny Watkins ad­mit­ted they weren’t able to meet with as many res­i­dents as they’d like to due to the COVID-19 re­stric­tions. How­ev­er, he said they were still main­tain­ing a pres­ence on the ground though small. He ex­plained the com­mit­tee was cur­rent­ly in the process of es­tab­lish­ing a base­line as­sess­ment of these com­mu­ni­ties and con­sult­ing with res­i­dents and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties op­er­at­ing in the ar­eas. He was aware of the res­i­dents’ scep­ti­cism to them and un­der­stands be­cause they were let down be­fore.

“We un­der­stand the cau­tion peo­ple have to feel too en­thu­si­as­tic about what we’re do­ing and that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­al­ly lies with us. We have to con­tin­ue the work. We have to de­liv­er,” he said.

He said the work to up­lift these com­mu­ni­ties would take some time but they are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing it gets done.

“These com­mu­ni­ties that are cause for con­cern, they did not ar­rive where they are in a year or two to where it is. It’s been a long so­cial, sys­temic and his­tor­i­cal fac­tors that brought us to where we are and some eco­nom­ic things as well.”