I do not know the man oth­er than from what I’ve read nor am I a mem­ber of the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment yet I feel com­pelled to of­fer these few words if on­ly as a res­i­dent of the South West Penin­su­la.

When first I came to Point Fortin I had to tra­verse La Brea as it was the on­ly route avail­able. Fifty years lat­er it still is. I al­so at that time pa­tron­ized a row of young men ped­dling man­goes on the La Brea stretch. To­day their de­scen­dants are still there on the same planks though the sup­port­ing drums may have rust­ed away.

While all this was hap­pen­ing (or not hap­pen­ing), the com­mu­ni­ties of Debe, Pe­nal and Siparia have thrived, with un­be­liev­able lev­els of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty be­ing ev­i­dent as you dri­ve through, all of this with­out any sig­nif­i­cant Gov­ern­ment pa­tron­age or large-scale in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment

What is it that makes ad­ja­cent com­mu­ni­ties so very dif­fer­ent, that one pros­pers and the oth­er re­mains stuck in ap­par­ent per­pet­u­al de­cline? The an­swers may be many, some more so­cial­ly or po­lit­i­cal­ly un­palat­able than oth­ers but let me per­haps sug­gest one.

Could it be ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty?

A com­mu­ni­ty that is iso­lat­ed stag­nates, in­ca­pable of ac­cess­ing so­cial, busi­ness and aca­d­e­m­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties that may pro­pel oth­ers to greater heights. You can now leave the Curepe in­ter­change and get to Debe in thir­ty-five min­utes whether your des­ti­na­tion is the dou­bles ven­dor or the UWI Debe cam­pus. You can­not re­peat that feat from La Brea or Point Fortin, which brings me to the point of this let­ter.

The for­tunes of La Brea and Point Fortin are in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked both hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced through the years the rise and fall of such en­ti­ties as Shell, Trin­toc, Petrotrin, Dun­lop and Lake As­phalt. All such en­ti­ties have ex­piry dates and even the great At­lantic would one day de­part these shores hope­ful­ly lat­er rather than soon­er.

Our on­ly hedge against this is to en­sure that in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment pro­vides at least an op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­cov­ery and sus­tain­abil­i­ty through di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

The pro­posed Point Fortin High­way has two spurs at Ves­signy, one to La Brea and the oth­er to Point Fortin de­signed to bring re­lief to both con­stituen­cies. This project re­mains a pro­pos­al un­til it is com­plet­ed and I hold no breath. An ear­ly copy of the ‘Shell Top­ics’ shows the then Chief Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams in 1958 shak­ing hands with the Shell Re­gion­al Man­ag­er on the pro­posed said high­way. That was six­ty-two years ago!

The fin­gers of blame for this un­ac­cept­able de­lay must point to the poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion the re­gion has seen over the past decades where suc­ces­sive Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment have seemed pow­er­less to prop­er­ly ad­vo­cate the is­sues of their con­stituen­cies, ap­pear­ing quite con­tent to have their tongues tied.

With their con­tri­bu­tion to the cof­fers of this land the con­stituen­cies of Point Fortin and La Brea de­serve a greater voice at gov­ern­men­tal lev­el for as I have asked be­fore, “what do the con­stituen­cies of Diego Mar­tin East, West and Cen­tral bring to the eco­nom­ic ta­ble that we of the South West must go cap in hand plead­ing to these gen­tle­men for a hand­out be it road, hos­pi­tal or fire sta­tion?”

The task at hand is for some­one to step up to the plate and ex­e­cute and un­less there are un­der­ly­ing is­sues of which I am un­aware, Robert Le Hunte, al­beit per­haps through force of cir­cum­stance, should be up to the task.

Ray­mond Aaron

Point Fortin

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