Joel Julien

There are at least two or­gan­i­sa­tions which have used pover­ty in Laven­tille for their own fi­nan­cial gain, MP for Laven­tille West Fitzger­ald Hinds has said.

Hinds said the groups man­aged to gain "ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fits" both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly on be­half of the "down­trod­den" of Laven­tille, but those ben­e­fits do not trick­le down to those who ac­tu­al­ly need it.

He made the state­ment yes­ter­day as he lament­ed that Laven­tille does not have a sense of com­mu­ni­ty but rather is made up of in­di­vid­u­als who on­ly think about them­selves.

Hinds said a prime ex­am­ple of this "self­ish­ness" is the fact that peo­ple were be­ing chased from their homes by oth­ers.

Hinds, who was elect­ed as the MP for Laven­tille West in 2015, served as the MP for Laven­tille East/ Mor­vant for 12 years pre­vi­ous­ly.

He made the state­ment dur­ing the Laven­tille Com­mu­ni­ty Em­pow­er­ment Sym­po­sium held at the Laven­tille Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­tin­u­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre yes­ter­day.

"Laven­tille's is­sues are not so much about in­fra­struc­ture it is large­ly about our cul­ture, mean­ing, in very gen­er­al terms, the way we do things. The things we do and the way we do them," Hinds said.

Hinds said an ex­am­ple of the self­ish­ness tak­ing place in Laven­tille is peo­ple be­ing chased from the homes.

"There are peo­ple who are chased out of their homes, for years hav­ing worked hard, hav­ing strug­gled, hav­ing in­her­it­ed it. Some­body de­cides I want your home. In fact, right now we are deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion where it is sug­gest­ed that two young men lost their lives be­cause some­body want­ed their home," Hinds said.

Hinds said or­gan­i­sa­tions were al­so us­ing pover­ty in Laven­tille to their own ben­e­fit.

"I know of at least two groups that use the plight of the peo­ple of Laven­tille go­ing all over the place in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and talk­ing about poor peo­ple in Laven­tille and down­trod­den and all of that and gain­ing ben­e­fits, ma­te­r­i­al be­fits which Laven­tille nev­er saw, and if Laven­tille saw it saw a mi­nus­cule amount."