Gail Alexan­der

One day af­ter Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt ad­mit­ted to mak­ing an er­ror in the con­struc­tion of a $2 mil­lion na­tion­al flag, his boss, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, says the Gov­ern­ment "will try to do bet­ter in the fu­ture."

Man­ning spoke yes­ter­day dur­ing the lat­est in PNM's walk­a­bouts in the Laven­tille West con­stituen­cy. It was a con­tin­u­a­tion of a se­ries of meet-the-peo­ple tours he has em­barked up­on on the theme, "Ex­plain­ing Poli­cies, Pro­vid­ing Op­por­tu­ni­ties". This is geared to au­dit the rul­ing par­ty's im­pact where Gov­ern­ment poli­cies on the com­mu­ni­ty is con­cerned. On the flag is­sue, Man­ning said an er­ror was made and Gov­ern­ment has ac­knowl­edged the er­ror and would move on "and will try to do bet­ter in fu­ture." He said, though, that the flag would stay since it was a sym­bol of T&T's sov­er­eign­ty and na­tion­al­i­ty. Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt (Port-of-Spain North MP) was no­tice­ably ab­sent from Man­ning's walk­a­bout yes­ter­day al­though Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc Don­ald and Laven­tille East MP Don­na Cox, among oth­ers, were present. Man­ning said the con­cerns that were raised dur­ing yes­ter­day's Laven­tille walk­a­bout fo­cussed gen­er­al­ly on three as­pects – hous­ing, un­em­ploy­ment and roads – none of which, he said, sur­prised him.

He said the PNM had been do­ing walk­a­bouts since last year and did not start re­cent­ly as some peo­ple had said. He ac­knowl­edged that some con­stituents dur­ing yes­ter­day's walk­a­bout had asked him about coun­cil­lors' rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He said rep­re­sen­ta­tion was gen­er­al­ly some­thing that was a ma­jor con­cern, even in his con­stituen­cy. While stat­ing it was im­pos­si­ble for coun­cil­lors to be every­where all the time, Man­ning as­sured the par­ty would ad­dress that is­sue. Asked if he was sat­is­fied with his MPs' per­for­mance Man­ning said: "By and large, yes." He said all the MPs and co-or­di­na­tors were man­dat­ed to walk in their con­stituen­cies and as a re­sult the PNM was in greater po­si­tion to tell what peo­ple felt and be­lieved in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

Man­ning ac­knowl­edged con­cerns about crime, not­ing that a lot of crime oc­curred in Laven­tille. "Every­one knows that," he said. He said in two weeks Gov­ern­ment would com­mis­sion six fast pa­trols boats and this was ex­pect­ed to boost crime- fight­ing ef­forts. Speak­ing at Des­pers Pan The­atre Man­ning not­ed some of Des­pers play­ers liv­ing out­side of the Laven­tille area have been un­cer­tain about their se­cu­ri­ty in the area. Man­ning, ac­com­pa­nied by MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite and oth­er PNM of­fi­cials, re­ceived a warm wel­come in the PNM strong­hold. How­ev­er sev­er­al res­i­dents ex­pressed con­cern to him along the way. PNM con­tin­ues con­stituen­cy mo­bil­i­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties with­out let-up, host­ing an­oth­er in the se­ries of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al con­fer­ences on Feb­ru­ary 20, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Car­ni­val.