Yvonne Webb

Chant­i­ng "no house, no votes," about 30 res­i­dents of Pointe-a-Pierre staged a noisy protest out­side the PNM con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day evening. The con­stituents, who are mem­bers of the Coali­tion of Mara­bel­la Com­mu­ni­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Com­co), said nu­mer­ous pre-elec­tions promis­es were made by their MP, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, but none were kept. Com­co mem­ber Rudolph Jack said: "We are dis­sat­is­fied with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our MP. They used us to mo­bilise the elec­torate in Pointe-a-Pierre be­fore the 2007 elec­tions.

"They promised us a state-of-the-art play­ing fa­cil­i­ty, hous­ing and the re­lo­ca­tion of peo­ple on the line. This is Ju­ly 2009 and they have not kept their promise," Jack said. Com­co ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Lin­coln Per­sad added that the is­sues of crime and un­em­ploy­ment al­so con­tin­ue to plague the res­i­dents.

Ter­rence Boissiere said, "Most of the peo­ple in this group are PNM ac­tivists, so it is no op­po­si­tion protest­ing here." He said they had sev­er­al meet­ings with Kan­ga­loo. "We went to her on many oc­ca­sions but each time she kept say­ing she would re­fer it to the rel­e­vant min­istries and that is where we are at," Boissiere said.

"We al­so spoke to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning by tele­phone and wrote him a let­ter, but we are yet to meet with him to dis­cuss these press­ing is­sues."

He added that this was just the start, as a meet­ing was planned with the wider com­mu­ni­ty to plan their next step. Kan­ga­loo, who nor­mal­ly at­tend to con­stituents on a Thurs­day, was out of the coun­try on Gov­ern­ment busi­ness yes­ter­day. In her ab­sence con­stituen­cy vice- chair­man An­drew Alves said he knew that the MP was mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the con­stituents be­half to the best of her abil­i­ty.