Melis­sa Doughty

Hous­ing and jobs were the main is­sues the peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain raised in a meet­ing yes­ter­day with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.Dur­ing the meet­ing at the South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School, al­most 500 res­i­dents al­so voiced their con­cerns over un­em­ploy­ment.Af­ter the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said very few peo­ple spoke about crime and the two main is­sues were iden­ti­fied as the so­cial caus­es of crime in the area: jobs and hous­ing.

Al­though she of­fered no im­me­di­ate so­lu­tions, she said their com­plaints were tak­en and there were Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) of­fi­cials on site to ad­dress the res­i­dents' con­cerns about hous­ing.The me­dia were not al­lowed in­to the meet­ing but as she left the PM told jour­nal­ists: "We had quite a heat­ed ex­change, very pas­sion­ate, on the is­sues which con­cerned the per­sons here.

"There were still some peo­ple who want­ed to speak but we still have two oth­er meet­ings this evening. So I have left Min­is­ter Samuel and some oth­ers to take those is­sues."The main is­sue that arose was, two things re­al­ly, hous­ing and mat­ters re­lat­ed to jobs. Those are the two main is­sues that were re­peat­ed through­out."So that we will look at it. We have a team from HDC and those peo­ple are at the mo­ment talk­ing to those in HDC hous­es."

She said every­one who raised a hous­ing is­sue was be­ing met by some­one from the HDC.The is­sue of jobs, she said, had to be ad­dressed in a dif­fer­ent way.Asked if there had been any im­prove­ment since her vis­it to Dun­can Street last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Cer­tain­ly, in terms of the po­lice pres­ence and the army, it has brought down the vi­o­lence to a cer­tain ex­tent and I want to com­mend the po­lice of­fi­cers for the work they have been do­ing thus far."

Asked to com­ment on the re­lease of some of the 90 peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing raids on Sun­day and the com­ment of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley that it was rem­i­nis­cent of what hap­pened af­ter the state of emer­gency in 2011, she said:"There ap­pears to be some kind of is­sue with the way the po­lice have op­er­at­ed with tak­ing peo­ple in. I will have to get a brief from them be­fore I can com­ment."

She said it was a mat­ter she in­tend­ed to raise with Row­ley when they meet to­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, to dis­cuss crime.Res­i­dents were then heard shout­ing for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to walk with them as she left the meet­ing. She agreed and walked a short dis­tance with them just be­fore she left for her oth­er meet­ing.

Be­fore the meet­ing, which be­gan at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 pm, res­i­dents stood wait­ing at the school en­trance with plac­ards which read: "We sup­port Madam PM"; "We love you; We sup­port you" and "We know you care". The PM al­so was greet­ed with ap­plause and cheers.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George al­so at­tend­ed.

At in­ter­vals dur­ing the meet­ing, which last­ed for more than three hours, raised voic­es could be heard, fol­lowed by ap­plause.Some res­i­dents and sup­port­ers, among them Chris­tine "Twig­gy" Levia, ex­pressed their joy at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pres­ence."The re­sponse that we get with the Prime Min­is­ter to­day, it ain't look like promis­es," she said.Levia said res­i­dents no longer want­ed Cepep and URP jobs. She said the res­i­dents need­ed re­al jobs and for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to vis­it more of­ten.

Levia said that was not Per­sad-Bisses­sar's last stop as she had not touched George and Nel­son Streets as yet.She iden­ti­fied job sta­bil­i­ty as one of the so­lu­tions to the prob­lem and said one of the first things res­i­dents want­ed was for the stig­ma to be re­moved from the area.

Fuad Abu Bakr, leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion par­ty, was al­so at the meet­ing. He al­so iden­ti­fied job sta­bil­i­ty as a so­lu­tion to some of the prob­lems, say­ing there was a con­sen­sus among the res­i­dents of east Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons that they want­ed sus­tain­able jobs. The peo­ple, he said, felt they were ne­glect­ed by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments and that trend was con­tin­u­ing.

He said the res­i­dents al­so pin­point­ed that the fo­rum for the meet­ing was a di­lap­i­dat­ed school.There was dis­con­tent in the meet­ing, he said. Asked what he ex­pect­ed out of it, he said he ex­pect­ed a com­pre­hen­sive plan to be de­vel­oped to ad­dress the is­sues of the res­i­dents, who were unan­i­mous that they did not want "$69 pro­grammes which be­lit­tle them."