Leah So­rias

"Pack your bags and re­turn to France!" These were the an­gry shouts of Cen­tral and East res­i­dents at a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the Rapid Rail project, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, Thurs­day night. The res­i­dents, whose homes and agri­cul­tur­al hold­ings stand in the cho­sen path of the rail, are de­mand­ing that the Trini­Train con­sor­tium re­spon­si­ble for con­duct­ing en­gi­neer­ing stud­ies on the Project, leave T&T im­me­di­ate­ly. The con­sor­tium com­pris­es rail­way equip­ment sup­ply com­pa­ny Al­stom, French com­pa­ny Bouygues Travaux Publics and rail­way op­er­a­tors RATP De­vel­op­ment Al­stom.

They at­tempt­ed for al­most an hour to com­plete tech­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tions, but were con­stant­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by the irate par­tic­i­pants. Al­most un­able to pla­cate the res­i­dents, mod­er­a­tor of the con­sul­ta­tion, se­nior jour­nal­ist Andy John­son was forced to cur­tail the pre­sen­ta­tions and give the con­cerned res­i­dents the floor. The up­set res­i­dents said they are pre­pared to die to en­sure the Rapid Rail is not in­tro­duced. They fired ques­tions so rapid­ly that the con­sor­tium was un­able to re­spond com­pre­hen­sive­ly. "No one con­sult­ed us. We have church­es, tem­ples, schools here and peo­ple's lives are knit­ted to­geth­er," said a Mrs Ram­nar­ine, of Es­mer­al­da Road, Cunu­pia. "Can you tell me if you can pay me for the 30 years I've lived there?" she asked.

An­oth­er res­i­dent shout­ed: "Them don't care about that. No, they don't." A mid­dle-aged woman said her hear­ing-im­paired son was trau­ma­tised by the pro­posed project. She said he tends a gar­den at the back of their Cunu­pia house and since talk of the Rapid Rail project sur­faced, he has been con­stant­ly cry­ing. "How can you say that you are im­prov­ing fam­i­ly life when you are de­stroy­ing it," the woman said. One of the pre­sen­ters felt that the Rapid Rail might di­vide as much as it links, but his com­ments served on­ly to fur­ther ag­gra­vate the res­i­dent. "It takes six months to build a house and 100 years to build a com­mu­ni­ty and you want to take a com­mu­ni­ty away from us?" a 70-year-old man shout­ed an­gri­ly. Nor­ris De­onar­ine, of the Na­tion­al Food Crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, said farm­ers were not pre­pared to give up land to ac­com­mo­date the Rapid Rail.