Mt Lam­bert

Mt Lam­bert is a qui­et, mid­dle-class and tra­di­tion­al­ly fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed com­mu­ni­ty that is slow­ly be­com­ing com­mer­cialised.

Small mom and pop busi­ness­es, mi­ni-marts, par­lours, and bak­eries in the com­mu­ni­ty have in some in­stances giv­en way ag­gres­sive­ly to the es­tab­lish­ment of bars, and night­time en­ter­tain­ment which at­tract out­siders, and some crim­i­nal el­e­ments. Res­i­dents like to think that the crime com­mit­ted in their com­mu­ni­ty is com­mit­ted by out­siders.

Large scale ten­ant build­ings have mush­roomed in the land­scape, at­tract­ing an in­flux of busi­ness­es owned/op­er­at­ed by peo­ple who are not orig­i­nal­ly from the area, com­pet­ing with tra­di­tion­al farm­ers for land space.

Gen­er­a­tions of res­i­dents had left Mt Lam­bert, mi­grat­ed, and some had re­turned to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Neigh­bour­hood watch group Res­i­dents of Mt Lam­bert pres­i­dent Shar­la Alexan­der-Dolabaille said crime had gone down an av­er­age of 32 per cent since the group shared in­tel­li­gence with the mem­bers of the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion re­gard­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and were al­so work­ing in tan­dem with the St Joseph and San Juan Po­lice Sta­tions.

Bangladesh

When peo­ple hear the word "Bangladesh" with its clus­ter of weath­er-beat­en gal­vanise and wood­en hous­es, at Farm Road, Curepe, they as­so­ciate the area with squalor and pover­ty, a de­pressed, mar­gin­alised and crime-in­fest­ed area, de­scribed as the Laven­tille of the East-West cor­ri­dor.

Bangladesh was tar­get­ed as a "hot spot" ar­ea with search and seizure ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed dur­ing a state of emer­gency in 2011.

Res­i­dents are stig­ma­tised, work is dif­fi­cult to find in the area, and like some Laven­tille and Beetham res­i­dents, they shy away from list­ing where they live to bet­ter their chances of em­ploy­ment.

Many res­i­dents feel they have been used po­lit­i­cal­ly and ne­glect­ed by MPs past and present.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ar­eas on Thurs­day to hear what the res­i­dents had to say about the up­com­ing Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 7.

The ques­tions:

1: What does a na­tion­al Bud­get read out by the Gov­ern­ment mean to you?

2: What are you ex­pe­ri­enc­ing liv­ing in the Mt Lam­bert com­mu­ni­ty that you would like to change or im­prove?

3: What would you like to see in the Bud­get to work for your house­hold and to im­prove your stan­dard of liv­ing?

Mt Lam­bert

Bernadette Ham­let:

It means we live in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety where al­though there is no pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, we as cit­i­zens are re­spect­ed as peo­ple. The Bud­get is read in a pub­lic set­ting and cit­i­zens have free ac­cess to the bud­get.

I am di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by flood­ing and I would like to see an im­prove­ment in in­fra­struc­ture which will ei­ther de­crease or elim­i­nate flood­ing.

As a na­tion our food im­port bill is high, we need to adopt an ap­proach that will al­low us to be self-sus­tain­ing. We need to make an in­vest­ment in hu­man cap­i­tal, tech­nol­o­gy and fi­nan­cial re­sources to ex­pand the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. An in­creased in­vest­ment in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor will as­sist in re­duc­ing the house­hold food bill.

Shar­la Alexan­der-Dolabaille:

A na­tion­al Bud­get points to mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to var­i­ous min­istries for spend­ing through the fis­cal year. In my com­mu­ni­ty of Mt Lam­bert, I wish to see a re­duc­tion in crime and law­less­ness. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I wish to see greater in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and a bet­ter in­sect vec­tor con­trol. A re­duc­tion in food prices and util­i­ties and al­so an in­crease in dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits.

Hema Ja­groop:

A bud­get is a plan for the fi­nan­cial years. Peo­ple on a lim­it­ed or fixed in­come may have to pur­chase cheap­er house­hold al­ter­na­tives to suit their in­come. One so­lu­tion is to be more self-suf­fi­cient like plant a kitchen gar­den so you won't have to pur­chase so much food.

I would like to see as part of the Bud­get an in­ter­est group like a House­wives As­so­ci­a­tion. This is for peo­ple who were not pleased with cer­tain prices to come to­geth­er, not to protest, but to pe­ti­tion and raise con­sumer aware­ness.

I would al­so like to see the youths in the com­mu­ni­ty get jobs, put in place a cen­tre like the Mt Lam­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre where they can be in­volved in weld­ing and au­to me­chan­ics.

Up­lift­ment groups should be formed for the youths to keep them away from drugs and idle­ness.

A stipend should be paid to the youths while they are be­ing trained. Funds should be al­lo­cat­ed in the bud­get for this.

Can­dice Lee Ed­wards:

When the Bud­get is read out, I pre­fer to take a look at it in the news­pa­pers to get a more de­tailed un­der­stand­ing be­cause some­times we miss the fine print.

We can cal­cu­late the full im­pact and re­vise it in its en­tire­ty. More se­cu­ri­ty is need­ed, more neigh­bours should come on board with a neigh­bour­hood watch, I am in such a group called Res­i­dents of Mt Lam­bert.

Crime is the main is­sue, the com­mu­ni­ty is con­cerned late­ly see­ing a lot of young boys com­ing from Mt Hope and en­vi­rons do­ing mis­chie­vous acts.

I had to chase away four youths from tam­per­ing with a ve­hi­cle, we need more pro­grammes in the com­mu­ni­ty to re­duce crime.

If left unchecked these "pet­ty" crimes will turn in­to big­ger crimes, its called the bro­ken win­dows the­o­ry and was a suc­cess in re­duc­ing crime in New York con­sid­er­ably in the 1990s un­der May­or Rudy Giu­liani.

The cost of food is high, some of the lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts that are ex­port­ed are sold cheap­er out­side, this is not ben­e­fi­cial to the av­er­age Trinida­di­an.

Ed­u­ca­tion is of para­mount im­por­tance, they should be aim­ing to get chil­dren to ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion. This means mak­ing GATE more read­i­ly avail­able. Val­ue will be added to lives and will not elim­i­nate crime, but help re­duce it.

Michelle Kong:

Crime af­fects us in more ways than you can imag­ine. I had in­tend­ed to open three busi­ness­es, but when I saw in the me­dia small busi­ness­es be­ing at­tacked and vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, it pre­vents us from cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty.

It had a very dev­as­tat­ing, neg­a­tive ef­fect es­pe­cial­ly for those out­side who want to come in and in­vest.

We found things have im­proved a lit­tle bit, but again the com­mu­ni­ty has to take part in the process, not vig­i­lante groups or any­thing like that, en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty, min­gling with each oth­er, giv­ing of ser­vice of each oth­er, group­ing to­geth­er by us­ing so­cial me­dia and be­com­ing more or­gan­ised.

The bud­get should re­al­ly go deep in­to deal­ing with the root of the prob­lem of crime, and what is caus­ing it.

Im­ple­ment a psy­cho­log­i­cal ap­proach and coun­selling in how to bring those com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er rather than be­ing afraid of each oth­er.

It is bet­ter to spend mon­ey on pre­ven­tion than cure.

Bangladesh

Sel­wyn Williams:

The Bud­get gives me fore­sight in­to what the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to spend. In my ex­pe­ri­ence, it is not what it seems, be­cause most times the Gov­ern­ment over­spends. The sec­tions of so­ci­ety like us that need the mon­ey do not get it. All gov­ern­ments past and present do us what they want.

We need po­lice pa­trols in the com­mu­ni­ty. Kids are out of con­trol. It's like Laven­tille and it seems that we are be­yond re­form.

Giv­en the prop­er at­ten­tion, things can change.

De­vant Singh:

It's on­ly CEPEP work here in Bangladesh. We are not em­ploy­able out­side. We are stig­ma­tised. The Bud­get means very lit­tle. On­go­ing prob­lems are steal­ing and al­co­holism.

I have no ideas what can be done to help, but Deyals­ingh and Vol­ney wast­ed our time.

Dwight Moon­sam­my:

No, the Bud­get makes no dif­fer­ence to us. We are part of St Joseph, a mar­gin­al seat, we are the ghet­to here. Deyals­ingh used us and for­got us. We need prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­cause we are for­got­ten.

I be­lieve that more in­fra­struc­ture, more fa­cil­i­ties and more op­por­tu­ni­ties can change Bangladesh.