KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath is urg­ing Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituents not to be mis­led by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan’s re­marks that progress in their com­mu­ni­ties de­pends on how they vote in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

Ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Pave­ment Re­port in Siparia on Tues­day night, Padarath crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent vis­it to Moru­ga, where he opened the Gran Chemin Fish­ing Cen­tre. He ref­er­enced a pho­to­graph of Cab­i­net mem­bers hold­ing fish, claim­ing it was a cat­fish, sym­bol­ic of their de­cep­tive ap­proach.

Dur­ing the open­ing, Sinanan sug­gest­ed that the project’s con­tin­u­a­tion de­pend­ed on vot­er sup­port.

“So I want to give you, the peo­ple of Moru­ga, the as­sur­ance that once you ex­er­cise your right and you vote the right way, no­body will stop this project,” Sinanan said last Fri­day.

Padarath dis­missed this as a false­hood re­peat­ed over the past decade. He not­ed that un­der for­mer PNM MP Lovell Fran­cis (2015–2020), Moru­ga/Table­land con­tin­ued to suf­fer from poor in­fra­struc­ture, youth un­em­ploy­ment, and un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply. He claimed Sinanan and Row­ley were last seen in the con­stituen­cy dur­ing the by-elec­tion for the Lengua/In­di­an Walk dis­trict in 2024.

Padarath drew com­par­isons with oth­er PNM strong­holds, such as Laven­tille West, Laven­tille East, and Port-of-Spain South, ar­gu­ing that long-stand­ing sup­port for the par­ty had not trans­lat­ed in­to im­proved liv­ing con­di­tions.

“You had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fix prob­lems in pub­lic util­i­ties—ba­sic things like wa­ter. In Moru­ga/Table­land, over 80 per cent of res­i­dents re­ceive wa­ter on­ly once per week, if they are lucky,” he said.

He cit­ed a 2023 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing in which WASA con­firmed that while 71 per cent of the coun­try had a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply in 2015 un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, that fig­ure had since fall­en to just 16 per cent. He ac­cused the PNM of fail­ing to im­prove ba­sic ser­vices de­spite rul­ing the coun­try for over 75 per cent of its post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry.

Padarath urged con­stituents to vote with a clear un­der­stand­ing of the PNM’s track record. He claimed that be­tween 2010 and 2015, un­der Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship, cit­i­zens ben­e­fit­ed from lap­tops for stu­dents, bet­ter roads, and im­proved wa­ter sup­ply. He com­mend­ed MP Michelle Ben­jamin for her per­sis­tent ef­forts to im­prove wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion in the con­stituen­cy.

He al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s re­peat­ed bud­get promis­es of a de­sali­na­tion plant for Moru­ga, stat­ing that a search of bud­get doc­u­ments re­vealed no al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing. He com­pared this to Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go, where sim­i­lar promis­es had been made since 1962.

Padarath praised To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor for chal­leng­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and the PNM on WASA’s han­dling of wa­ter sup­ply is­sues.

“The peo­ple of To­ba­go are not fool­ish. I am ask­ing the peo­ple of Moru­ga/Table­land and Trinidad not to be fool­ish.”

He al­so point­ed out that al­though Row­ley an­nounced he would step down in De­cem­ber, he ap­peared to be wait­ing on ad­min­is­tra­tive arrange­ments to se­cure his in­creased salary un­til Feb­ru­ary.