JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

While the in­au­gur­al cul­tur­al event for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess, con­cerns emerged over the post-event clean-up at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port of Spain, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for clean­ing the in­te­ri­or of the Sa­van­nah falls un­der the Min­istry of Cul­ture. How­ev­er, she sug­gest­ed stray dogs may have torn open garbage bags left by work­ers from the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS).

“The Min­istry of Cul­ture is han­dling the in­side of the Sa­van­nah, and we dealt with the streets. Last night, while I was there, there were quite a few stray dogs around. They were fight­ing, and I sus­pect they ripped open some of the garbage bags be­cause the area had al­ready been cleaned,” Ameen said.

“Our work­ers placed the garbage in bags, and I be­lieve the dogs tore them open be­fore the col­lec­tion trucks ar­rived.”

Ameen said crews would re­turn to re­move the re­main­ing waste and called on cit­i­zens to play a greater role in dis­pos­ing of their garbage re­spon­si­bly.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­served work­ers dis­man­tling the bleach­ers and VVIP area used for the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade.

Ahead of the cel­e­bra­tions, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud raised con­cerns about the po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of stag­ing ac­tiv­i­ties on the north­ern side of the Sa­van­nah. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Aboud said those con­cerns re­main.

“The en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues are crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant from a cul­tur­al and her­itage per­spec­tive be­cause the Sa­van­nah be­longs to all of us, and no politi­cian has the right to in­ter­fere with our na­tion­al her­itage. It is wrong to in­ter­fere with what be­longs to the peo­ple,” he said.

Mean­while, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to de­liv­er on its promise of silent fire­works.

At a me­dia brief­ing on Au­gust 26, Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gist Jerome Lewis an­nounced that the In­de­pen­dence Day dis­play would fea­ture silent py­rotech­nics.

“We will be pre­sent­ing silent fire­works to re­duce the loud bangs and the im­pact on pets and peo­ple who may live near­by. All of this will be co­or­di­nat­ed with the rel­e­vant avi­a­tion, fire, se­cu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties,” Lewis said.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents in Wood­brook and Dibe, Long Cir­cu­lar, re­port­ed hear­ing the fire­works from their homes.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Bood­hu ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic.

“They made bold as­sur­ances which turned out to be false. That is noth­ing new, and it makes lit­tle sense dwelling on the de­cep­tive con­duct of this Gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple will re­mem­ber,” he said.

Bood­hu al­so ques­tioned the cost of this year’s cel­e­bra­tions and called on the Min­istry of Cul­ture to re­veal the ex­pen­di­ture.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin re­quest­ed ques­tions be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing. Up to press time, no re­sponse had been re­ceived.

– with re­port­ing by Gail Alexan­der