SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Miss World T&T con­tes­tant Jea­nine Brandt has apol­o­gised for her com­ments on pover­ty in the coun­try af­ter a mas­sive out­cry from cit­i­zens on so­cial me­dia.

On Mon­day, Brandt’s speech from the Miss World com­pe­ti­tion in Puer­to Ri­co sum­maris­ing her “Beau­ty with a Pur­pose” project went vi­ral, with many claim­ing she had gross­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ed T&T’s sit­u­a­tion by say­ing there were thou­sands of lit­tle girls who sleep on the floor in their homes.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Brandt said she was asked to present her project in un­der two min­utes dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion and meant no harm through her con­tri­bu­tion.

“As the Miss World rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go, I ap­pre­ci­ate the sig­nif­i­cance of my role. I can and have at­test­ed to the all the beau­ty our na­tion has to of­fer, how­ev­er, in this in­stant I was asked to present on a so­ci­etal is­sue I was pas­sion­ate and pur­posed about,” Brandt said.

She said for the past two years she has worked through her non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, The Brandt Beau­ty Foun­da­tion, to as­sist those in un­der­priv­i­leged com­mu­ni­ties.

“My in­ten­tion was nev­er to por­tray our twin-is­land na­tion in a neg­a­tive light or to bring ill re­pute to the Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go fran­chise,” she said.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Bayshore, Mara­bel­la, one of the com­mu­ni­ties Brandt vis­it­ed dur­ing her project in the run-up to the Miss World com­pe­ti­tion.

Those in the com­mu­ni­ty re­mem­bered Brandt’s vis­it.

Don­na Scott-Cob­ham, a fore­man with CEPEP, said she was pleased to see a Miss World can­di­date in Mara­bel­la back then.

“They gave out san­i­tary sup­plies to the young ladies, I re­ceived san­i­tary sup­plies for my grand­daugh­ter be­cause she wasn’t home at the time and all the young ladies on the line got sup­plies. I was very hap­py to see her, I had nev­er met a con­tes­tant for Miss World or Miss Uni­verse be­fore,” Scott-Cob­ham re­called.

She said the com­mu­ni­ty ap­pre­ci­at­ed Brandt’s gen­eros­i­ty but she de­nied there were any fam­i­lies in the area who were liv­ing un­der the con­di­tions Brandt de­scribed dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion.

“No, not in this area, any­time some­one re­al­ly go­ing through it here, we try to come to­geth­er, con­tact the MP (Faris Al-Rawi) and help them out, it prob­a­bly have that go­ing on in oth­er places but not here,” Scott-Cob­ham said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Keisha Robain, said she did not know the ex­tent of Brandt’s state­ments be­cause she did not want to en­ter­tain “fool­ish­ness.”

“Is the ghet­to yes but peo­ple have their beds, no­body sleep­ing on the floor, no­body sleep­ing on the road,” Robain said.

She said that lev­el of pover­ty does not ex­ist in Mara­bel­la.

Asked how she would de­scribe the hard­ships fac­ing res­i­dents, Robain said, “They mightn’t have some­thing to eat, they just poor. They mightn’t have mon­ey on them…they not pay­ing rent be­cause they are squat­ters so that is the lev­el of pover­ty - peo­ple squat­ting cause they don’t have work to pay $2,500 a month for rent.”

Anasa Warn­er mean­while said while she thinks there may be some in­stances of ex­treme pover­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty, she be­lieves those cas­es are in the mi­nor­i­ty.

“I don’t think it’s as much as she (said), it prob­a­bly have here and there that we know about but I think she over ex­ag­ger­at­ed with the thou­sands, prob­a­bly if she had said a few hun­dreds here and there, but not thou­sands,” Warn­er said.

Warn­er said she be­lieved Brandt may have been mis­in­formed about what life in the “ghet­to” was like.

She of­fered some ad­vice to the beau­ty queen and oth­ers who may won­der what she and oth­er res­i­dents face.

“Go do a lit­tle more re­search, meet the peo­ple, hear their cries, don’t as­sume from what you hear - come and ex­pe­ri­ence it, that’s my ad­vice to her.”

How­ev­er, founder of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC), Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph, says those who were an­gry at Brandt for her state­ment were an­gry at the wrong thing.

In an in­ter­view last evening, Hec­tor-Joseph said there are many fam­i­lies who live be­low the pover­ty line in T&T.

“Any cit­i­zen who is an­gry at Ms Brandt is ei­ther ig­no­rant of what is tak­ing place in our coun­try, naive, cal­lous or in de­nial,” Hec­tor-Joseph said.

“A lot of us don’t want to face the re­al­i­ty be­cause if we had to, we would have to live dif­fer­ent­ly and we would be called to ac­count, so we don’t want that - our angst is mis­di­rect­ed.”

She said she does not know Brandt, holds no brief for her and was not try­ing to de­fend her but added, “I am say­ing we have a se­ri­ous pover­ty sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try, for a coun­try that has seen so many oil booms, it is un­ac­cept­able.”

Hec­tor said al­though T&T has free health care and ed­u­ca­tion, many cit­i­zens still can­not ac­cess the ser­vices they need.

“When some­body has to stay so long to get an ul­tra­sound, when a ba­sic ul­tra­sound ma­chine you can get for the equiv­a­lent of US$5,000, and you have to spin in cir­cles and know some­body to get your ul­tra­sound, that is crit­i­cal for your di­ag­nos­tic, when we have our cit­i­zens un­der these un­san­i­tary tents get­ting wet, when the (Ed­u­ca­tion) Min­is­ter by her own speech says 2,000 stu­dents fell off the grid..those things do not speak to a se­ri­ous prob­lem in our so­ci­ety?” Hec­tor-Joseph asked.

She said in or­der to fix the is­sues, the coun­try must ac­cept and recog­nise the prob­lems.

“If we con­tin­ue to ig­nore them, the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing will con­tin­ue to suf­fer more.”

She said those whose cri­tique was about the way in which Brandt phrased her state­ments were giv­ing life to a non-is­sue.

“If that is what peo­ple are get­ting their knick­ers in a twist about, there­in lies why we are where we are to­day.”

She said mes­sages sent to ITNAC alone could val­i­date Brandt’s state­ments “a thou­sand times over.”

She said in 2021, ITNAC vis­it­ed those in need at their homes be­cause of re­stric­tions on move­ment caused by the pan­dem­ic.

“We had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­side peo­ple’s hous­es and oh my God, I don’t even want to talk to about it…you see these key­board war­riors on Face­book who are of­fend­ed, are of­fend­ed over the wrong thing, what they need to be of­fend­ed by, why af­ter bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars, our cit­i­zens are liv­ing like dogs,” she said.

She said those who say Brandt’s state­ments make T&T “look bad” on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage seem to on­ly be con­cerned about the coun­try’s im­age.

“That’s like when the neigh­bours come over long time and you cov­er up every­thing in­side with a sheet to make it look neat but it stink, there is too much suf­fer­ing in this coun­try, whether she makes us look bad or not, peo­ple are still suf­fer­ing,” Hec­tor-Joseph said.