Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the De­fence Force had to be called in to man­age and guard the new Laven­tille Com­mu­ni­ty Swim­ming Pool.

Yes­ter­day the Prime Min­is­ter of­fi­cial­ly opened the $4.9 mil­lion dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty which will be called the So­gren Trace Swim Club.

He said the De­fence Force had to man­age the swim­ming pool fa­cil­i­ty to en­sure it is not mis­used or poor­ly main­tained.

“The main­te­nance be­comes the is­sue now, and the Gov­ern­ment will take steps to en­sure that the main­te­nance is done. It is the util­i­sa­tion that will be im­por­tant. This pool is built for a pur­pose and to en­sure that it is used for that pur­pose, I will ad­vise the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, to en­sure that in the bud­get, for the De­fence Force at the ap­pro­pri­ate line item, there are ad­e­quate re­sources made avail­able be­cause the CDS and his team will need those re­sources to bring to Laven­tille and to de­liv­er here what is re­quired to make this pool a suc­cess,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

The Prime Min­is­ter urged the res­i­dents to not al­low the pool to go to waste.

He al­so called on the peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure that the fa­cil­i­ty does not be­come lost to the stig­ma of the area.

“Laven­tille has been stig­ma­tised as a place in our na­tion where in­dis­ci­pline pre­vails and where vi­o­lence is the or­der of the day, to the ex­tent that if this fa­cil­i­ty is built and left here with­out the prop­er re­sponse and arrange­ment in a mat­ter of three months it will be tak­en over by frogs, be­cause frogs will love to live in there. The wa­ter will turn green and the pool would be­come a fail­ure,” said Dr Row­ley.

He al­so hoped that the man­age­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty would re­duce po­ten­tial con­flict, “It re­quires man­age­ment, it re­quires dis­ci­pline to keep it clean and us­able and healthy. It re­quires the man­age­ment struc­ture and the in­puts that we as­so­ciate with the De­fence Force and the Coast Guard to come here in the com­mu­ni­ty along with the po­lice ser­vice. And the par­ents of the neigh­bour­hood to en­sure that this neigh­bour­hood is a safe neigh­bour­hood for young­sters and their fam­i­lies to walk to and from this fa­cil­i­ty.”

He said the De­fence Force would des­ig­nate spe­cif­ic days for ac­tiv­i­ties, so as to min­imise pos­si­ble con­flicts.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so called on vol­un­teers to come for­ward to help with the de­vel­op­ment of tal­ent in the area.

“And I am sure in the De­fence Force and the Coast Guard; there are swim­mers, there are or­gan­is­ers, who would want to vol­un­teer here, just to make sure that they con­tribute to chang­ing the life of a boy or girl in Trinidad. Find those vol­un­teers and at­tach them to this pro­gramme,” said Row­ley.