KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin says he is hop­ing that the Gov­ern­ment will see the im­por­tance of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form and that it will al­so be able to pro­vide the fi­nances nec­es­sary to strength­en lo­cal gov­er­nance. 

This was once a promise of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form was a key cam­paign fo­cus for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the 2023 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

How­ev­er, now that po­lit­i­cal pow­er has switched hands, Austin says lo­cal gov­ern­ment prac­ti­tion­ers can on­ly wait and see.

And with Khadi­jah Ameen, a for­mer Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man her­self, now in charge of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, Austin says he knew that she was aware of what was ex­pect­ed, and it was just a mat­ter of see­ing it be­ing rolled out.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Com­mis­sion­ing of the Ve­tiv­er Flood and Land­slide Mit­i­ga­tion Project in Blan­chisseuse yes­ter­day, Austin said, “First and fore­most, to make lo­cal gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly as lo­cal gov­ern­ment prac­ti­tion­ers, to make us ro­bust, we must ex­e­cute lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form. We are lit­tle to noth­ing with­out lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, and what it would bring for us. And with the re­peal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), I could on­ly wait and see what will give us those fi­nances to ex­e­cute what needs to be ex­e­cut­ed to give us that meat and to give us that func­tion­al­i­ty. All we can do is wait on what comes next.”

And with the rainy sea­son in full ef­fect, Austin says a lot was done over the last few years to deal es­pe­cial­ly with flood­ing is­sues.

He added, “We’ve had a se­ri­ous roll­out of our pre­vi­ous plans. We would have iden­ti­fied re­cent­ly over 60 drains that would have been cleaned in prepa­ra­tion for this, and we would have seen the im­pact; a lot of homes were saved re­cent­ly. This wasn’t a one-week­end thing. It was a holis­tic thing that we were do­ing months pri­or. So, we con­tin­ue to roll out our plans as di­rect­ed by our pre­vi­ous line min­istry, and we have an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive plan that we con­tin­ue to roll out.”

The cor­po­ra­tion’s Ve­tiv­er Flood and Land­slide Mit­i­ga­tion Project is aimed at land and slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion, ero­sion con­trol and in­fra­struc­ture pro­tec­tion, soil and wa­ter con­ser­va­tion, mulching as well as top­soil re­gen­er­a­tion.

The project was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with IAMove­ment, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Com­mon­wealth Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Fo­rum.

Ve­tiv­er grass is a trop­i­cal and sub-trop­i­cal plant which grows best in sun­ny con­di­tions and has a deep fi­brous root sys­tem that ex­tends up to ten feet deep, mak­ing it a very ef­fec­tive tool for slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion and ero­sion con­trol.