As Prime Min­is­ter and in­cum­bent MP for Port-of-Spain North/ St Ann's West Stu­art Young con­tin­ued his push to muster sup­port from his lat­est com­mu­ni­ty walk­a­bout, sev­er­al res­i­dents in Bel­mont took the time to raise con­cerns about safe­ty and wa­ter sup­ply with him.

Young be­gan the walk­a­bout on Thurs­day, two hours af­ter host­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, where he and oth­er sup­port­ers walked from their con­stituen­cy head­quar­ters on Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road, stop­ping to meet, greet and speak with sev­er­al res­i­dents who shared their sup­port and is­sues they hoped he could ad­dress if he re­turned to of­fice.

As Young and his sup­port­ers turned on­to Bel­mont Val­ley Road, past McK­ai Lands, one res­i­dent said is­sues of crime and vi­o­lence were be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly preva­lent in re­cent years, adding that he took the time to bring the mat­ter to Young's at­ten­tion as he greet­ed res­i­dents.

The man, Ro­han George, ac­knowl­edged that while crime and vi­o­lence af­fect­ed every com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, he was hope­ful Young from his role as MP and Prime Min­is­ter could bet­ter se­cure the com­mu­ni­ty.

"Com­pared to how I knew it as a child it's got­ten much worse over the past few years.

"It's not un­com­mon to hear a gun­shot or a few gun­shots from what I as­sume is a ma­chine gun. Thefts aren't a prob­lem so much, but you see that vi­o­lent crime, it's some­thing that has a lot of peo­ple wor­ried in Bel­mont."

Sev­er­al mur­ders have been record­ed for the year thus far in Bel­mont alone.

On Jan­u­ary 7, Nigel Latch­man, 19, was shot and killed while trav­el­ling on Up­per St Fran­cois Val­ley Road as his moth­er, Fe­li­cia Hare­wood, was wound­ed in the at­tack.

Days lat­er on Jan­u­ary 13, Onel­la Parks, 33, an em­ploy­ee with the Port-of- Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was am­bushed and gunned down as she walked on Gloster Lodge Road on her way to work.

On Jan­u­ary 18, Steven Chu­niesingh and Ian Thomas were gunned down on Collins Road, Bel­mont.

An­oth­er res­i­dent on the St Fran­cois Val­ley Road said while crime was an is­sue, they were al­so con­cerned about a lack of wa­ter on al­most a dai­ly ba­sis.

"It isn't as bad as oth­er ar­eas, but the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion is re­al­ly ir­ri­tat­ing at times.

"We won't have wa­ter around mid­day so we have to plan and an­tic­i­pate for these short­ages if and when we're home."

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia be­fore the walk­a­bout be­gan, Young said he felt "priv­i­leged" to rep­re­sent the con­stituen­cy for the past ten years, not­ing he did not take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty light­ly.

"This af­ter­noon is all about con­nect­ing with my con­stituen­cy, show­ing them love, lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple."

Asked about bal­anc­ing his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as Prime Min­is­ter and cam­paign­ing for the elec­tion, Young said he in­tend­ed to walk "as much as he could" to hear from con­stituents.

"I am a ser­vant of the peo­ple. That is the role to make sure I make the right de­ci­sions for my com­mu­ni­ty and con­stituen­cy."

As Young and his pro­ces­sion left Bel­mont, he took the time to greet res­i­dents on Harpe Place and Char­ford Courts, east Port-of-Spain, who al­so shared their thoughts and con­cerns with him.