Renu­ka Singh

A planned walk­a­bout in em­bat­tled En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, by In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day up­staged an im­promp­tu walk­a­bout in the same area by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Warn­er and his ILP sup­port­ers walked right past the Post­man Grounds where Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sev­er­al top cops met with the res­i­dents to de­liv­er foot­ball uni­forms to the Crown Trace Foot­ball Club. The team has a game in Or­lan­do, Flori­da, and the cost of flights and uni­forms is be­ing off­set by the Gov­ern­ment.

Even as Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­gan her own walk­a­bout mo­ments be­hind Warn­er and took the same path that he did, she was met with a much dif­fer­ent re­ac­tion.

She was joined by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, re­tired brigadier gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so; act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams; Chief of De­fence Staff Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ken��rick Ma­haraj; Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt John­ny Abra­ham; and a 20-ve­hi­cle con­voy. She was al­so ac­com­pa­nied by Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Bood­han and MP for the area, Stephen Cadiz.

Warn­er was wel­comed and cheered while very few peo­ple came for­ward to meet Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cadiz.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke with sev­er­al res­i­dents, all of whom de­clined to al­low pho­tographs or give their names.

"Walk­ing around now not help­ing we when we bel­ly burn­ing when the night come eh sis­ter. Peo­ple want jobs, peo­ple want to eat, drink and all they do­ing is talk," one man said.

When asked why Warn­er was wel­comed while Per­sad-Bisses­sar was giv­en a cold­er re­cep­tion, he said they were "ac­cus­tomed see­ing Warn­er in the back here."

"We al­ways see­ing Warn­er, he was here a few times al­ready just this week," he said.

An­oth­er man re­fused to speak to the me­dia but stood some dis­tance away say­ing that the area re­mained ne­glect­ed for years. When ap­proached by Cadiz he kept step­ping back, telling Cadiz that he didn't know him and should leave him alone. "We nev­er seen him in the back here," one man said.

An­oth­er said that they need­ed jobs, in­come, food and help in the En­ter­prise area.

Warn­er has met qui­et­ly with sev­er­al of the al­leged gang lead­ers in the area over the past week and said that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was mak­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion "po­lit­i­cal."

"It's on­ly on elec­tion time we see­ing them," Warn­er said. "We didn't tell any­one that we vis­it the area, we tell no one that we talk with the men in the var­i­ous sec­tions."