AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion did not host its an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion this year, opt­ing in­stead to redi­rect its ef­forts to­wards food as­sis­tance and back-to-school sup­port.

For the past three years, the Cor­po­ra­tion has host­ed In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions at the Ed­die Hart Grounds, fea­tur­ing a cul­tur­al show and fire­works dis­play.

Last year, the event drew mas­sive crowds fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s can­cel­la­tion of the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade and fire­works dis­play due to claims of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin said that “based on the state of the coun­try right now” the cor­po­ra­tion made the de­ci­sion to pro­vide greater sup­port to peo­ple in need across its 16 dis­tricts.

“We usu­al­ly do back-to-school vouch­ers and school sup­port, along with food sup­port, with ham­pers and gro­cery vouch­ers and so forth, in each of the elec­toral dis­tricts with­in our cor­po­ra­tion. We’ve sort of am­pli­fied that this year and re­al­ly give back,” Austin said.

He said an event would in­stead be held at the Tu­na­puna Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre to fa­cil­i­tate this com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.

Pre­vi­ous In­de­pen­dence Day events, he said, were spon­sored, with the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceiv­ing sup­port from the busi­ness and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

He stressed that the de­ci­sion was not prompt­ed by a lack of spon­sor­ship or fund­ing.

“The spon­sor­ship is there,” Austin said. “How­ev­er, we’ve de­cid­ed to take this time to do this. Ob­vi­ous­ly, you know, there may be sev­er­al cut­backs, but the spon­sor­ship is there.”

Last year’s cul­tur­al event fea­tured many cul­tur­al groups and per­for­mances along with noise­less fire­works, the first of its kind by the cor­po­ra­tion, in keep­ing with State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions at the time.

In the past few weeks, the Ed­die Hart Grounds have al­so been an area of con­tention be­tween the cor­po­ra­tion and the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, with a po­lice post now lo­cat­ed on the com­pound.

Austin has main­tained the cor­po­ra­tion is not op­posed to the po­lice post, but has raised con­cerns about the lack of con­sul­ta­tion, plan­ning and the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture as­sess­ments be­fore con­struc­tion be­gan.

Mean­while, the Gov­ern­ment has de­fend­ed the project, which is of a wider na­tion­al crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive.