Akash Sama­roo

The Prime Min­is­ter has in­struct­ed the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to cre­ate a set of rules which will gov­ern how com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres are man­aged and main­tained.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Diego Mar­tin North Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his Cab­i­net is re­ceiv­ing sev­er­al com­plaints about the quick de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres through­out the coun­try.

“As a re­sult of what is hap­pen­ing the Cab­i­net has de­cid­ed we will have to put some for­mal arrange­ments in place that will ap­ply across the board to en­sure a fa­cil­i­ty like this does not be­come a free for all and then next thing you come back here in a year and half and you have to ask what’s go­ing on here,” he said.

Equal­ly alarm­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter said there were re­ports that peo­ple were treat­ing the fa­cil­i­ties like their own per­son­al prop­er­ty.

He said, “I don’t want to hear in my con­stituen­cy that some­body owns the cen­tre and the steel band peo­ple that want to prac­tise can­not get in, a com­mu­ni­ty that wants to do some­thing can’t get in and then some­body col­lect­ing mon­ey that the Gov­ern­ment knows noth­ing about, that hap­pens too, I know about it. And the min­is­ter has been in­struct­ed to bring to the Cab­i­net re­spon­si­ble arrange­ments. It may not mean one size fits all be­cause cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties may have pe­cu­liar­i­ties that re­quire the min­is­ter to co-op­er­ate with cer­tain things but cer­tain­ly you want to have a sys­tem that al­lows trans­paren­cy and full util­i­sa­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty,” the Prime Min­is­ter said to tu­mul­tuous ap­plause from the res­i­dents who at­tend­ed the func­tion.

The cen­tre, on Church Street, has in­door sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as well as broad­band in­ter­net and a com­put­er lab. Row­ley said he wants the fa­cil­i­ty to be “overused” with ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pen­ing every day.

But there’s one ac­tiv­i­ty the Prime Min­is­ter does not want on or near the com­pound.

“Dis­ci­pline is what this should rep­re­sent. We don’t want to hear in the yard of this com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre this is where some­thing came to grief and some­body got in­to an al­ter­ca­tion with some­body else and that was set­tled with a weapon of some kind, we want this to be a safe place.”

The Prime Min­is­ter told his con­stituents that the new fa­cil­i­ty built by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott) to re­place an old­er struc­ture, should be seen as a bea­con of hope and an in­di­ca­tor that Diego Mar­tin is ready to be a Bor­ough.

In Feb­ru­ary, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi pi­lot­ed a bill in Par­lia­ment to el­e­vate both Diego Mar­tin and Siparia to Bor­ough sta­tus.

How­ev­er, Row­ley lament­ed the short­age of funds at all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and said this jus­ti­fies the re­turn of Prop­er­ty Tax. “A lot of peo­ple have some of the best prop­er­ties in the coun­try, pre­served by the work the Gov­ern­ment does on your be­half, you want the roads, you want the lights, you want the fire ser­vice, you want the rats killed but you must not pay prop­er­ty tax.”

The Prime Min­is­ter de­clared that this coun­try has “gen­er­at­ed in­to a na­tion of com­plain­ers.”