?Were it not for the young­sters who seem bent on wip­ing each oth­er out, Covi­gne Road in Diego Mar­tin would be un­known to most peo­ple. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, peo­ple are form­ing the wrong im­pres­sion of the place be­cause it makes the news for the wrong rea­sons. Nor­mal­ly, one can walk or dri­ve through Covi­gne Road and its off streets and not see or ex­pe­ri­ence any­thing un­to­ward. Those who use it to get to oth­er ar­eas have no fear of do­ing so. That is not to say there are not prob­lems, as with every­where else, but re­cent­ly a few ser­vice providers have de­cid­ed, with­out good rea­son and prop­er in­for­ma­tion, to with­draw from the Covi­gne run which they ser­viced be­fore with­out in­ci­dent.

For their ben­e­fit, a typ­i­cal day on Covi­gne Road would be­gin around 5 am with res­i­dents go­ing to or re­turn­ing from their morn­ing walks; the garbage truck col­lect­ing garbage; work­ers and un­ac­com­pa­nied young chil­dren hus­tling along in the dark pre-dawn hours on their way to work and school; the bread vans mak­ing their de­liv­er­ies with­out se­cu­ri­ty; the Je­ho­vah's Wit­ness­es and the Mor­mons cov­er­ing Covi­gne and the sur­round­ing streets sev­er­al times a month spread­ing their Bible mes­sages, and res­i­dents go­ing about the nor­mal day-to-day af­fairs unim­ped­ed. The fe­male let­ter car­ri­er walks along al­most de­sert­ed streets and de­liv­ers her mail un­mo­lest­ed; women use the short­cuts in the area with­out fear; ser­vice and de­liv­ery ve­hi­cles tra­verse the streets all day long; and work­men who con­duct their jobs there (many com­ing from out­side) would be hard-pressed to say they've seen any­thing un­to­ward.

One would feel more un­com­fort­able walk­ing in cer­tain of the more-tra­versed ar­eas of Port-of-Spain and its sur­round­ings than walk­ing along Covi­gne Road.

Peo­ple, in­clud­ing women from the out­side, vis­it there night and day with­out in­ci­dent. So it is a pity that some busi­ness own­ers have tak­en de­ci­sions based on what oth­ers have done with­out them­selves hav­ing a shred of ev­i­dence or any good rea­sons for so do­ing. I would hope this kind of think­ing does not spread.

Carl Pierre

Port-of-Spain