?The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry is about to put a new im­age on all mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties through­out the coun­try and Ari­ma is ex­pect­ed to be trans­formed in­to the eco-cul­tur­al cen­tre of T&T.

It is the first time an ex­er­cise of that na­ture is ex­pect­ed to take place in T&T, a re­lease from the min­istry stat­ed. As part of Gov­ern­ment's 2020 vi­sion man­date, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry has em­barked on a re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment plan for all mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, the re­lease stat­ed. It added: "To ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment these plans, the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has em­ployed the ser­vices of sev­er­al in­te­grat­ed de­vel­op­ment plan­ning con­sul­tants who are as­signed to all the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

"The con­sul­tants have been meet­ing with the var­i­ous in­ter­est groups and burgess­es and are now pre­sent­ing the first draft to the pub­lic for com­ments and en­dorse­ment." On Feb­ru­ary 24, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning was present at the Ari­ma Town Hall where she re­spond­ed to the con­cerns of the pub­lic, the re­lease added. "In her re­sponse to a gen­tle­man, who said that there had been no de­vel­op­ment in Ari­ma for 56 years, the min­is­ter re­spond­ed that 56 years ago 'Ari­ma was bush,'" the re­lease said.

Dur­ing that time sev­er­al de­vel­op­ments had oc­curred such as hous­ing and sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, schools and busi­ness cen­tres. The state­ment con­tin­ued: "The min­is­ter re­grets that the state­ment, which was made dur­ing the cut and thrust of a very in­ten­sive di­a­logue, was tak­en out of con­text."