Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The an­nu­al Tu­na­puna Day mil­i­tary pa­rade con­tin­ued with­out any for­ma­tion from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, chair­man of the Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Josi­ah Austin, said he was nonethe­less grate­ful for the sup­port of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.

The third an­nu­al mil­i­tary pa­rade, which forms part of the Tu­na­puna Day cel­e­bra­tions, be­gan just af­ter 11 am at Con­stan­tine Park, Ma­coya.

For­ma­tions from the TT Cadet Force, the Air Scouts, the T&T Fire Ser­vice and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean March­ing Band were present.

Speak­ing with re­porters at an af­ter-pa­rade re­cep­tion, Austin con­firmed that the TTPS opt­ed not to par­tic­i­pate in the pa­rade as there was no com­man­der to lead the for­ma­tion.

He said he was grate­ful for the as­sis­tance of Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro, who still as­signed the TTPS March­ing Band to the event.

“Ide­al­ly when we first asked we were told that there was a pass­ing out cer­e­mo­ny com­ing up and as such they had to ma­noeu­vre things and I know they did as best as they could to en­sure we have some rep­re­sen­ta­tion here to­day but un­for­tu­nate­ly there were no com­man­ders so the band and the de­tach­ment couldn’t car­ry on, but we are thank­ful for them at least show­ing up and they’ve shown up all the years pri­or and to be fair we were the on­ly re­al mil­i­tary pa­rade in the coun­try for the year, so we were thank­ful for what was pre­sent­ed here to­day.”

Austin said the pa­rade has con­tin­ued to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty and at­trac­tions since its in­cep­tion, which has mir­rored the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co re­gion.

A Trinci­ty na­tive, Austin said he has seen first­hand the de­vel­op­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty and said the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion con­tin­ues to ful­fil its man­date through co­op­er­a­tion from gov­ern­ment and pri­vate-sec­tor stake­hold­ers.

“I have seen where in this time and by this coun­cil we have found in­no­v­a­tive ways to meet the needs of the burgess­es.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly with what we are af­ford­ed as a cor­po­ra­tion it’s not enough, so we’ve done part­ner­ships with TCL where road restora­tion is con­cerned and we in­tend to car­ry this all the way up to Aripo and Blan­chisseuse and the more dis­tant ar­eas be­cause we want to touch and help each and every­one.”

Austin said the en­tire TPRC serves over 250,000 peo­ple and said such pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships would as­sist in fur­ther de­vel­op­ment across their re­gion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He al­so said the open­ing of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to fa­cil­i­tate the flow of traf­fic, as a por­tion of the East­ern Main Road was closed off for the pa­rade and Sat­ur­day night’s Pan and Pow­der cel­e­bra­tion, was done with­out in­ci­dent.