Shas­tri Boodan

The elec­toral con­stituen­cy of Ch­agua­nas East is the clas­sic case of a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy as it is very di­verse along the lines of eth­nic­i­ty and class. There are three ma­jor com­mu­ni­ties in the area – Lange Park, En­deav­our and En­ter­prise – and these can safe­ly be clas­si­fied as the up­per class, low­er mid­dle-class and low class re­spec­tive­ly. Each faces its own share of prob­lems. The peo­ple of Lange Park grum­ble about the lack of se­cu­ri­ty and traf­fic con­ges­tion. Those liv­ing in En­deav­our suf­fer from bad drainage and poor roads un­til a re­cent mas­sive road-paving ex­er­cise start­ed in the area. En­ter­prise faces the prob­lems of ram­pant crime, drug abuse, drug-traf­fick­ing, HIV/Aids, un­em­ploy­ment and a grow­ing preva­lence of sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies.

In En­deav­our res­i­dents com­plained to the T&T Guardian they have nev­er seen Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, MP for the area. Charles Ram­lal, 42, a poul­try ven­dor, said the last time they saw Ab­dul-Hamid was for the last gen­er­al elec­tion. He said: "He came here like all politi­cians around elec­tion time. The PNM does not care about the peo­ple of En­deav­our, They are here at the last minute paving roads hop­ing to win some votes. "But that is an old elec­tion gim­mick from the Er­ic Williams days. Peo­ple are not falling for that. Why wasn't the roads fixed all these years? "You go patch one pot­hole and ex­pect that to fix all the years of ne­glect." Ram­lal al­so com­plained about traf­fic con­ges­tion.

Charles Ram­lal...of En­deav­our Pho­tos: Shas­tri Boodan

He said: "There needs to be a traf­fic plan to deal with the flow of the thou­sands of peo­ple us­ing Lange Park and En­deav­our as a short­cut. "Peo­ple from the hous­ing de­vel­op­ments at Cashew Gar­dens and Ed­in­burgh 500 have no choice but to dri­ve through these nar­row streets to get out of Ch­agua­nas. "What hap­pens is chaos in the morn­ing and evening. The area al­so has a lot of busi­ness." He asked: "What has Mr Ab­dul-Hamid done to solve this? Has he done any work on the En­deav­our fly­over to cre­ate a con­stant mov­ing round­about like what you have in South." Ram­lal said En­deav­our was pre­dom­i­nant­ly an Op­po­si­tion strong­hold that sup­port­ed the COP in the last polls. This view was shared by Poorans­ingh Ram­dass, 49, a dry-goods ven­dor who op­er­ates a road­side shop. Ram­dass said the area suf­fered at the hands of drug ad­dicts, com­mon­ly called "pipers", who snatched any­thing that was not bolt­ed down.

Su­san­nah Berkley.

Lange Park

At Lange Park, Su­san­nah Berkley, pres­i­dent of the Fil­ipino As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, and mem­ber of the Greater Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce, said while she did not see Ab­dul-Hamid, the MP sent his rep­re­sen­ta­tive to reg­u­lar­ly meet with the res­i­dents of Lange Park. Berkley said she had no com­plaints about the roads and drains but de­scribed the traf­fic con­ges­tion in the bor­ough as a night­mare. She said it took her al­most an hour to make a two- kilo­me­tre dri­ve to Ch­agua­nas dur­ing peak hours. Bob­by Shep­pard, the pres­i­dent of the Lange Park Res­i­dents As­so­ci­a­tion (LAPRA), said traf­fic and a lack of se­cu­ri­ty were the ma­jor blows hit­ting the res­i­dents of Lange Park. He said Lange Park now has sev­er­al gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in­side of the de­vel­op­ment that orig­i­nal­ly start­ed in the 1970s.

He said there were about 1,200 hous­es with a pop­u­la­tion of near 6,000 of which around 4,000 could vote. He said around 12 per cent of the vot­ers in the up­scale com­mu­ni­ty were PNM sup­port­ers while the rest swung to the COP or the UNC with the for­mer of the two Op­po­si­tion par­ties get­ting the li­on's share of sup­port from the area.?Shep­pard said the com­mu­ni­ty was al­so an age­ing one with sev­er­al wid­ows liv­ing on lim­it­ed re­sources. He said the great­est prob­lem apart from crime was the traf­fic con­ges­tion in the area. Shep­pard said his or­gan­i­sa­tion had nev­er met with Ab­dul-Hamid and had sub­mit­ted sev­er­al traf­fic plans and sug­ges­tions to the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties that were not con­sid­ered.

He said a con­sid­er­able amount of time was lost by com­muters who would rather not work than have to ven­ture out of Ch­agua­nas. Cit­ing and ex­am­ple, Shep­pard said his son who owned a roti shop in Port-of-Spain could not get work­ers from Cen­tral to ven­ture in­to the cap­i­tal city be­cause of the traf­fic con­ges­tion and woes to get trans­port out of Ch­agua­nas. Shep­pard said would-be work­ers com­plained they would have to spend sev­er­al hours to and from the job place. He said LAPRA want­ed to see the es­tab­lish­ment of a po­lice post near the high­way to re­spond to calls. Shep­pard said be­cause of the traf­fic the po­lice and oth­er emer­gency ser­vices would find it dif­fi­cult to get to Lange Park and en­vi­rons. He al­so knocked the Min­istry of Health for set­ting up the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre at Pen­co Street. Shep­pard said the fa­cil­i­ty had no park­ing and was a poor choice. He al­so re­called that po­lice post was set up for a few days be­fore the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion as an elec­tion gim­mick.

We vot­ing PNM

In En­ter­prise, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers said they were hap­py with the PNM and most said they would vote PNM with­out even wink­ing. Mar­vin G, a 27-year-old man of the area who was busy play­ing Bu­ju Ban­ton's "Gimme D Weed" while lim­ing along En­ter­prise Street, said he had no prob­lem with the Gov­ern­ment but a prob­lem with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his re­la­tion­ship with for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott, Calder Hart. "PNM I vot­ing, maybe COP; def­i­nite­ly not UNC, but I want to know why Calder Hart get so much of we mon­ey and I ent hear noth­ing about that yet," he said. Fur­ther up En­ter­prise Street, near the Lendore Vil­lage Hin­du School Nicholas Lewis, 21, said he would be sup­port­ing the COP. "Two ah them join up (COP and the UNC), PNM do­ing a good job but we need a li'l change in the coun­try. It have cer­tain things they (the PNM) ent do­ing...too much peo­ple do­ing crime in the coun­try and they get­ting away with it too easy," he said.?Ralph Fran­cis, 54, said he had a prob­lem with the drainage in the area but was sure the Gov­ern­ment would fix it. "I hop­ing for PNM to win again," he added. Fran­cis said the area was well rep­re­sent­ed by Ab­dul-Hamid. When asked if the area need­ed spe­cial at­ten­tion be­cause of the area's drug prob­lem and HIV, he said: "I don't know any­one with Aids around here. What drug prob­lem?"

Savi Ma­haraj...dou­bles ven­dor

At War­ren Road, some res­i­dents said they did not know if Ab­dul-Hamid or Jack Warn­er, the Ch­agua­nas West MP, was their MP. Dou­bles ven­dor Savi Ma­haraj, 37, said she be­lieved she lived in Ch­agua­nas West. "I see they paving down the road. This must be Ch­agua­nas West be­cause they blank we. Look at the drains, half-way built and cov­ered with bush."?Dayanand Mun­gal, 43, al­so of War­ren Road, said Ch­agua­nas was one com­mu­ni­ty that was split to en­sure that the PNM got a seat in Cen­tral. He said: "They are fix­ing the peo­ple in the PNM strong­hold and ne­glect­ing us. It's the Gov­ern­ment that has the mon­ey and re­sources to to the work not the MP, so who they fool­ing." Gopaul Bood­han, 51, coun­cil­lor for Mon­rose on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC),?who was one of 11 peo­ple screened by the UNC for the seat, said Ch­a­gu­nanas East was poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed and that would be an easy seat of a unit­ed Op­po­si­tion to win.

Dayanand Mun­gal...of War­ren Road

Bood­han, who has lived in the area since birth, said the UNC was guar­an­teed to win the seat be­cause the COP and the UNC had joined forces. He said once the votes were not split the UNC would run home with the seat.?Bood­han de­scribed the com­mu­ni­ty as di­verse, with each pock­et of the pop­u­la­tion need­ing its own spe­cial care and at­ten­tion to deal with the pletho­ra of prob­lems plagu­ing Ch­agua­nas East. Ronald Heera, a PNM coun­cil­lor on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC), said he sup­port­ed Ab­dul-Hamid 100 per cent. Heera said the MP had done an ex­cel­lent job rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple and had at­tend­ed to most of their needs, such as pro­vid­ing in­fra­struc­ture and ba­sic ameni­ties.