Pe­ter Bal­roop

Hun­dreds of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 53 Com­mon­wealth coun­tries will see that the T&T Gov­ern­ment's Vi­sion 2020 dream is yet to cre­ate a sparkle in the eyes of res­i­dents on Trinidad's rur­al north-east coast.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tives, mem­bers of the Com­mon­wealth Peo­ple's Fo­rum (CPF), will spend No­vem­ber 26 in the area as guests of To­co Foun­da­tion.

The CPF is a fore­run­ner of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), to be held in Port-of-Spain from No­vem­ber 27 to 29. Arrange­ments have al­ready been made and con­firmed with the fo­rum's project man­ag­er, Joany Gri­ma, a cit­i­zen of Mal­ta, and her steer­ing com­mit­tee, ac­cord­ing to foun­da­tion co-or­di­na­tor, Michael Als.

He is promis­ing their vis­it will be a no-holds-barred tour of the north-east coast, and the foun­da­tion will en­sure that they see life for res­i­dents is an un­ceas­ing strug­gle to bet­ter them­selves.

What they won't have time to see, they will hear about, Als has in­di­cat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Als, the tour will be­gin with a vis­it to the Na­ture Seek­ers' tur­tle pro­tec­tion es­tab­lish­ment run by Su­san Lakhan-Bap­tiste in Matu­ra.

Then the vis­i­tors from the five con­ti­nents will at­tend a sem­i­nar at the com­mu­ni­ty com­plex in To­co, where they will meet com­mu­ni­ty groups from the re­gion. This will be fol­lowed by a site vis­it to To­co Com­pos­ite School, where they will tour the To­co Mu­se­um, which is housed on the com­pound.

Next, they will jour­ney to the fa­mous To­co light­house at Point Galera, be­fore vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ty sta­tion, Ra­dio To­co 106.7FM, housed in the Vic­to­ria Pritchard Re­source Cen­tre. Then, it is off to the agro tourism cen­tre at L'Anglais, where the day's ac­tiv­i­ties will cli­max, says Als.

"They phys­i­cal­ly don't have time to do much else. They leave Port-of-Spain at 8 am and have to get back at 8 pm," said Als. He not­ed that he would have liked to have had the time to es­cort the dis­tin­guished vis­i­tors straight up To­co Main Road to Matelot, to al­low them to see the bumpy state of the route and the stan­dard of liv­ing res­i­dents ex­pe­ri­enced.

Matelot a dis­as­ter

Matelot, Als stressed, was, in his view, a "dis­as­ter area..."

He says it is a "scan­dal" that the au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the present MP, In­dra Sinanan Ojah-Ma­haraj, and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive on San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion,Ter­ry Ron­don, have been promis­ing to fix that 27-kilo­me­tre stretch of road for years, but the re­pair work is yet to ma­te­ri­alise that could ac­com­mo­date pub­lic trans­port like PTSC bus­es.

The trans­port, health and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tors were cru­cial to To­co and en­vi­rons emerg­ing from the slum­ber it had been locked in for decades, ac­cord­ing to Als. A res­i­dent of the coast for the past 22 years, and con­sid­ered the de fac­to May­or of To­co, Als said suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments had em­ployed two speeds in de­vel­op­ing the re­gion:"slow and stop..." He ex­plained: "The pow­er-bro­kers put the peo­ple in the promised land, and when they are ready to move, ready to roll, they have nowhere to go."

Coun­try book­ies

The prob­lem was the peo­ple were seen as "coun­try-book­ies" to be grudg­ing­ly doled out favours which would im­prove their lives, and the prob­lem was ag­gra­vat­ed be­cause the re­gion was un­der-rep­re­sent­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly. That was why Ra­dio To­co, where Als is a di­rec­tor, had ap­plied to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty for a na­tion­al broad­cast li­cence. Say­ing he ful­ly ex­pect­ed Cab­i­net would soon ap­prove the li­cence, Als said: "We will be heard through­out the na­tion, and will be bring­ing the coun­try to the town." Ra­dio To­co could be the sav­iour of the re­gion, Als said. Dur­ing the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, the San­gre Grande cor­po­ra­tion, chaired by Gabriel Hen­der­son, dished out the worst treat­ment the north-east coast could have ex­pe­ri­enced, Als said. How­ev­er, un­der cur­rent chair­man Ronald Boynes, pro­vi­sion of ameni­ties had sunk even low­er. "It's the pits," Als de­clared. "I don't know what they have done with all the re­sources they have been al­lo­cat­ed over the years."

PTSC punc­tu­al

On the pos­i­tive side, aged res­i­dents in par­tic­u­lar were ec­sta­t­ic that af­ter 30 years they were again get­ting reg­u­lar–and punc­tu­al–PTSC bus ser­vice. On the down side, the au­to­mat­ic teller ma­chine (ATM) ser­vice First Cit­i­zens had in­stalled in Cumana had not been re­sumed af­ter it was van­dalised two years ago by "an­ti-so­cial el­e­ments..." A month ago, a US med­ical team held an eye and den­tal clin­ic in To­co Com­pos­ite, but on­ly 150 pa­tients in the over­flow­ing crowd could be seen, said Als.

When the clin­ic moved to Matu­ra, the To­co res­i­dents who had not been at­tend­ed to trav­elled down, but were pre­vent­ed from see­ing the med­ical team, be­cause Matu­ra res­i­dents, who were al­so out in their num­bers, de­mand­ed they be giv­en pri­or­i­ty. This was caused by the Gov­ern­ment not giv­ing the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) the per­son­nel re­sources in terms of doc­tors and nurs­es to ser­vice the north-east coast, where there were six health clin­ics at Matelot, Grande Riv­iere, Sans Souci, To­co, Cumana and Matu­ra. He said he knew the po­si­tion be­cause he used to be an ER­HA di­rec­tor. It was al­so un­for­tu­nate that there was a short­age of core teach­ing and fa­cil­i­ta­tive staff for the 13 pri­ma­ry and three sec­ondary schools in the area.

The ex­ist­ing staff tried their best, but it was too much for them. Each SEA class, for ex­am­ple, need­ed three teach­ers, but on the coast most pri­ma­ry schools had to make do with one. The irony was a school like To­co Com­pos­ite was now be­ing recog­nised as a cen­tre for pro­duc­ing ath­letes and, in his view, should get more Min­istry of Sports back-up ser­vices.

In terms of crime, the To­co Foun­da­tion was main­tain­ing its gate­keep­er pro­gramme, a com­mu­ni­ty cus­to­di­an ex­er­cise where adults kept their eyes on ac­tiv­i­ties of the youths, and sup­port­ed the work of Matu­ra, To­co and Matelot Po­lice Sta­tions. To­co Foun­da­tion al­so did its best to pro­vide em­ploy­ment, thanks to fi­nan­cial sup­port from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies which had nev­er wa­vered from pro­vid­ing a help­ing hand, said Als.