CHARLES KONG SOO

Ris­ing out of the ash­es of the sug­ar in­dus­try that helped to build the econ­o­my of Princes Town af­ter it was closed in 2003, the town has emerged as one of South's ma­jor shop­ping towns and a haven for bar­gain hunters. Sug­ar plan­ta­tion work­ers have giv­en way to the rise of the mer­chant class and en­tre­pre­neurs.

The heart of the cap­i­tal now usu­al­ly has grind­ing traf­fic as shop­pers pa­tro­n­ise a mix of fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness­es, a su­per-store, su­per­mar­kets, fur­ni­ture stores, house­hold and va­ri­ety stores, small shops, and con­glom­er­ate fran­chise names.

Busi­ness­es in the sprawl­ing town are now forced to spread to the out­skirts and out­ly­ing ar­eas of the town.

The area al­so has tremen­dous po­ten­tial for tourism and recre­ation­al de­vel­op­ment with at­trac­tions in­clud­ing the Dev­il's Wood­yard, Triveni Hin­du Tem­ple, Ram Leela, the Chris­to­pher Colum­bus' land­ing site, and the Moru­ga Spring Bridge.

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath said "When you speak with mem­bers of the busi­ness sec­tor they say Princes Town has out­grown it­self. The traf­fic con­ges­tion is hor­ren­dous, many busi­ness­es are look­ing to ex­pand and are now mov­ing out of Princes Town. There is sim­ply no room in the town area, with its num­ber of old build­ings and small stores.

"With re­spect to con­nec­tiv­i­ty, if the San Fer­nan­do to Ma­yaro High­way was built, it would open up many op­er­a­tions, not on­ly for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties but al­so new en­tre­pre­neurs to in­vest in dif­fer­ent sec­tors of Princes Town."

He said the high­way would con­nect the town to the rest of the coun­try. Padarath said he was al­most cer­tain the high­way would at­tract eco­nom­ic growth, a resur­gence and in­fu­sion of life back in­to com­mu­ni­ties that can be done with eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Princes Town would be­come a hub for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The high­way project was part of the PP gov­ern­ment's plan if they had re­ceived an­oth­er term in of­fice. He said he has spo­ken to Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han and the Gov­ern­ment about it.

Padarath said this would open up sev­er­al rur­al com­mu­ni­ties like Ma­yaro and Na­pari­ma and jobs will be cre­at­ed. He said many times peo­ple had to leave homes from Rio Claro at 3 am to reach Princes Town be­cause of the de­plorable road con­di­tions.

Padarath said he was look­ing for­ward to ei­ther this gov­ern­ment or its suc­ces­sor mak­ing it a re­al­i­ty.

Padarath said he would most def­i­nite­ly like to see a cul­tur­al sport­ing cen­tre in Princes Town, but the two main pri­or­i­ties were the high­way and school.

Padarath said res­i­dents were very fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed, as a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­ly val­ues would have been tra­di­tion­al­ly passed down.

He said the neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties as well will be tru­ly ap­pre­cia­tive as Guardian Me­dia hosts its com­mu­ni­ty games in Princes Town on Sun­day.

Padarath said that was the way they had been brought up, the San­cho Crick­et Ground, where the event will take place, was an area well known for crick­et and sports.

He said it was a main­stay and kept the com­mu­ni­ty con­nect­ed and con­tin­ued to be the lifeblood of the area, pro­duc­ing sev­er­al not­ed play­ers such as West In­dies crick­eters Dave Mo­hammed, Pri­or Jones, and Joseph Small.