Kevon Felmine

Chair­man of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ram­raj Har­riper­sad read the ri­ot act to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day and at the same time com­mend­ing them for help­ing in the town's de­vel­op­ment. "Pol­lu­tion and il­le­gal dump­ing will not be tol­er­at­ed," Har­riper­sad said at an in­ter-faith ser­vice held at St Stephen's An­gli­can Church com­mem­o­rat­ing the 131st an­niver­sary of the nam­ing of the town. The ser­vice was fol­lowed by a street pa­rade with mem­bers of the Cadet Corps, Cub Scouts, Fire of­fi­cers, and mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion.

In his ad­dress Har­riper­sad not­ed that busi­ness­men were well off. In the cir­cum­stances, he point­ed out, there was no need to dump garbage in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly and lit­ter the town. He al­so called on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to share their wealth with the less for­tu­nate. In a wide-rang­ing ad­dress, Har­riper­sad de­scribed the re­gion as the "land­slip cap­i­tal" of the coun­try. He as­sured, how­ev­er, that this is an is­sue that is re­ceiv­ing pri­or­i­ty from his ad­min­is­tra­tion. He spoke al­so about plans to fur­ther de­vel­op the area, in­clud­ing an ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing to be con­struct­ed for the Cor­po­ra­tion this year, re­fur­bish­ment of recre­ation parks and sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

With re­spect to Moru­ga, Har­riper­sad ad­vo­cat­ed cel­e­brat­ing the re­turn of Dis­cov­ery Day say­ing it is the first place where Colum­bus touched Trinidad soil in 1498. He al­so laid out plans for the de­vel­op­ment of a mu­se­um at Moru­ga, preser­va­tion of his­tor­i­cal sites, and a re­newed em­pha­sis on fish­ing and agri­cul­ture. "We are look­ing af­ter your best in­ter­ests and to work hand in hand with you," he pledged.

Har­riper­sad al­so com­mend­ed po­lice of­fi­cers, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of ASP May­nard for re­duc­ing and keep­ing crime down in the com­mu­ni­ty and for the suc­cess­ful drug erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es over the past few months.

He al­so com­mend­ed the aca­d­e­m­ic achiev­ers from the area, iden­ti­fy­ing stu­dents of St Stephen's Col­lege. Har­riper­sad al­so in­formed the con­gre­ga­tion, which in­clud­ed MP Neela Khan and mem­bers of the Cor­po­ra­tion, that screen­ing of can­di­dates will soon be un­der­tak­en for the po­si­tions of Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and En­gi­neer. A health and safe­ty of­fi­cer will al­so be in­tro­duced in­to the sys­tem soon, he said.

Khan gave a brief his­to­ry of Princes Town, re­mind­ing at­ten­dees that Princes Town, for­mer­ly Mis­sion of Sa­vana Grande, was re­named af­ter the 1880 vis­it by Queen Vic­to­ria's grand­sons, Princes Al­bert and George.The princes each plant­ed a poui tree at the An­gli­can church grounds in the area. They sur­vive to this day.