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Monday, July 14, 2025

Pay more attention to foot soldiers—delegate

by

2800 days ago
20171113
Soca artist Dexter “Blaxx” Stewart during his performance at the PNM convention yesterday.

Soca artist Dexter “Blaxx” Stewart during his performance at the PNM convention yesterday.

Abraham Diaz

The rul­ing PNM needs to pay more at­ten­tion to foot sol­diers who feel alien­at­ed and Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters, MPs and Sen­a­tors need to make them­selves more avail­able, says PNM Laven­tille West del­e­gate Wayne Grif­fith.

Grif­fith’s com­plaint came dur­ing yes­ter­day’s PNM con­ven­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. His ob­ser­va­tion re­ceived the longest, loud­est ap­plause dur­ing the morn­ing ses­sion of the all-day event.

The theme of the 47th con­ven­tion was “Em­brac­ing the Fu­ture with Con­fi­dence - Stronger To­geth­er.”

PNM chair­man Franklin Khan opened the con­ven­tion say­ing the PNM was in of­fice just over two years in very chal­leng­ing times. De­tail­ing is­sues which PNM met in 2015 and how Gov­ern­ment sta­bilised it, Khan added.

“In the chal­leng­ing times, Gov­ern­ment needs the unswerv­ing sup­port of the par­ty. You have to sup­port and stand be­hind our Prime Min­is­ter and par­ty...through thick and thin. The cur­rent al­ter­na­tive is chaos and cor­rup­tion...de­spite what de­trac­tors say, I know PNM is al­ways red and ready,” he said.

How­ev­er, calls for PNM’s ex­ec­u­tive, Gov­ern­ment arms and par­ty or­gans to im­prove op­er­a­tions, weak­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ca­tion out­reach was a ma­jor­i­ty theme among re­port sub­mis­sions from del­e­gates from con­stituen­cies all over T&T.

In that seg­ment, Laven­tille’s Grif­fith called for at­ten­tion to the re­la­tion­ship and lack of re­port­ing be­tween PNM, MPs, Sen­a­tors and the Cab­i­net and the par­ty’s base. More at­ten­tion needs to be paid to PNM’s foot sol­diers who feel alien­at­ed and on­ly need­ed at elec­tion times while at­ten­tion al­so needs to be paid to con­stituen­cies, he added.

“We need to bridge that gap - Min­is­ters, MPs and Sen­a­tors need to make them­selves more avail­able,” he said to rous­ing ap­plause.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so ur­gent­ly needs to ad­dress the un­em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion and con­stituen­cy lead­er­ships, Grif­fith said.

He said a lev­el of dis­crim­i­na­tion is per­ceived in the labour mar­ket con­cern­ing cri­te­ria for Gov­ern­ment con­tracts es­pe­cial­ly in the con­struc­tion sec­tor where small con­trac­tors and pro­cure­ment re­quire­ments are con­cerned. He said big con­trac­tors who give small­er ones work, keep the bulk of the mon­ey for them­selves.

Grif­fith called for ur­gent at­ten­tion to East Port-of-Spain in­fra­struc­ture which he said has been lack­ing since Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) days. But Grif­fith com­mend­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for pru­dent eco­nom­ic man­age­ment pre­vent­ing job loss and main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty.

Say­ing tough times re­quire tough mea­sures, Grif­fith urged col­leagues, “Broth­er and sis­ters be strong. Don’t be un­grate­ful, let’s con­tin­ue to sup­port PNM, nev­er give up on your team.”

Fyz­abad del­e­gate Wayne Wood said bet­ter analy­sis was need­ed to gauge mem­bers’ mood.

PNM Women’s League del­e­gate Oni­ka Haynes not­ing con­ven­tion theme of PNM “be­ing stronger”, said a chain is as strong as the weak­est link. She said yes­ter­day was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en links. Haynes said some PNM com­mit­tees need to do more work and the par­ty’s school needs to be launched.

Re­mind­ing PN­Mites of PP per­son­al­i­ties, she urged, “PNM peo­ple, close ranks, strength­en the weak links and sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter and MPs — strength­en the weak­ness­es and en­sure we re­turn to of­fice for a long, long, long time.”

Del­e­gate Vanes­sa Ford (POS North) said PNM’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions of­fi­cer (POS North MP Stu­art Young) “con­tin­ues to fail to meet ex­pec­ta­tions” and needs more help. Del­e­gate Col­in Rod­ney said clear dis­tinc­tion needs to be made be­tween par­ty and Gov­ern­ment’s PR strat­e­gy.

Ari­ma del­e­gate Cagney Cas­simire sug­gest­ed Women’s and Youth leagues as­sist in con­vey­ing par­ty mes­sages. Youth League del­e­gate Wayne In­niss called for op­por­tu­ni­ties for youth to con­tribute to the par­ty.


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