Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have ex­pressed dif­fer­ing opin­ions on re­cent polls which show that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's rat­ings have de­clined over the last year. At an in­ter­faith ser­vice at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, yes­ter­day, to mark the par­ty's first year in of­fice, sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters of­fered an­oth­er take on the re­sults of the polls. Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he did not think that the Gov­ern­ment or the cit­i­zen­ry should put too much cre­dence on the polls. "I think every­one says we can­not put too much cre­dence in polls," he said. "At the end of the day, we have a job to do and I think most peo­ple can look back and say that their lives are bet­ter off than they were a year ago. "We have come in­to a sit­u­a­tion where there has been a sad de­gree of ne­glect, not on­ly in agri­cul­ture, but al­so in health and ed­u­ca­tion."

De­spite crit­i­cisms, Bharath said peo­ple must ap­pre­ci­ate that things took time. "Clear­ly, when com­ing in­to new gov­ern­ment it takes you time to find your feet...It nat­ur­al that you can­not at­tend to every sin­gle thing," he added. How­ev­er, he said he was proud of what the Gov­ern­ment had achieved in one year. "I was proud of the achieve­ments pub­lished in the re­port...It will take the PNM 50 or 60 years to do what we have done in one year," Bharath said. "There will al­ways be peo­ple who will not be to­tal­ly hap­py, but the Gov­ern­ment has been in of­fice in one short year, and we have to look at what we achieve and start look­ing at the fu­ture and im­ple­ment our own poli­cies."Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma said the drop in rat­ings arose out of the high ex­pec­ta­tions peo­ple had in Gov­ern­ment. "There is noth­ing wrong with that but you must re­alise that pri­or to go­ing in gov­ern­ment one would not have known the quan­tum of mon­ey that was avail­able to gov­ern­ment," he said.

"As you know there is a glob­al mon­ey cri­sis and we have found our­selves in a chal­leng­ing po­si­tion be­cause of the bills run up by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion." He added, how­ev­er, that the poll re­sults should be in­struc­tive and should serve as a les­son. "The polls are a snap­shot and have taught us a les­son...The polls tell us we need to re­vis­it and take stock and al­so tells us what we are do­ing right," he said. "We are build­ing ear­ly child­hood cen­tres, po­lice of­fi­cers have more mon­ey...In terms of de­liv­ery, we are way ahead but there is much more to do." Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh who spent $3 bil­lion in so­cial ser­vice de­liv­ery for the past year, said any­where the PM went through­out the coun­try, peo­ple were elat­ed. "That would have been a snap­shot in time, but the feel­ing of the peo­ple on the ground is an ela­tion over the amount of work that we did in past year," he said.

"That is just one poll, there is a lot that needs to be done, we know where we have to put em­pha­sis. "We are gain­ing a lot of ground...There were things we had to deal with and it is all in good stead for the next four years." Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said that what­ev­er was said, the poll showed that the Prime Min­is­ter was still the most pop­u­lar Prime Min­is­ter in the coun­try to­day. "It showed, too, that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is still the most pop­u­lar Gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er you say," she said. "Over time, we will al­ways have these ups and down, but de­spite this, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and the Prime Min­is­ter are still the most pop­u­lar, so I don't think there is any­thing to be con­cerned about." Like her Cab­i­net col­leagues, she al­so said that the coun­try had a lot of hope in the par­ty, and the peo­ple were still con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ties of the Prime Min­is­ter.