DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Most peo­ple re­fer to it as the shop­ping cap­i­tal of the coun­try, and for good rea­son. Peo­ple walk­ing along the side­walks of Ch­agua­nas spill on­to its streets. A con­stant crescen­do of ven­dors sell­ing clothes, food, veg­eta­bles, snow­cones and hon­ey-roast­ed nuts fills the air. Above those voic­es, are the sounds of car horns—some are taxi dri­vers hus­tling, oth­ers are an­noyed mo­torists stuck in traf­fic.

A trip down­town is cap­ti­vat­ing as Busy Cor­ner spot­lights the hus­tle and bus­tle of the well-known com­mer­cial cen­tre. Buy­ers use friend­ly ban­ter when chal­leng­ing their main com­peti­tors for cus­tomers who are of­ten search­ing for bar­gains. Promis­es of sweet deals are re­peat­ed through­out “Sug­ar-Gua­nas”.

But things aren’t al­ways so peachy as ex­pec­ta­tions of grandeur are damp­ened by is­sues plagu­ing a com­mu­ni­ty that is burst­ing at the seams. Ch­agua­nas is sim­ply too crowd­ed for the cur­rent in­fra­struc­ture and is plagued by traf­fic, flood­ing, crime, and in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges.

“We have leaks, worse thing is the toi­let, no lights and no fans. We lose cus­tomers, we lose sales, and we have to throw away goods when they get wet, they spoil. We have cus­tomers who slip, some­times they fall. They’re blam­ing us but it’s not us,” said mar­ket ven­dor Har­ry­lall Har­ry­paul as he point­ed to wa­ter drip­ping from a met­al beam at­tached to the ceil­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty.

A few min­utes of rain­fall soaked the paw paw, pineap­ples and ba­nanas at a near­by stall. Foot traf­fic al­so made the path­way sludgy as the dust ab­sorbed the wa­ter from the rain.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee who works down­town, a Venezue­lan na­tion­al, said she is fear­ful for her safe­ty. In­side her busi­ness place at a mall in the area is the pun­gent smell of ace­tone, syn­ony­mous with the av­er­age nail sa­lon, and the sound of laugh­ter. The beau­ty shop ap­pears to be a haven for a group of Venezue­lans and one Colom­bian who are try­ing to make an hon­est dol­lar. Their cus­tomers were al­so Span­ish speak­ing though they said that they of­ten get lo­cal clients.

Daniela Cumana said she has lived in T&T for sev­en years. She has two sons, one of whom passed for Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege af­ter writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment Ex­am (SEA) and re­ceiv­ing his re­sults on Ju­ly 3. For her, the main is­sue in Ch­agua­nas is crime.

“We can’t get a taxi reg­u­lar on the street be­cause we feel un­safe. Some­times we have to close the busi­ness late and we afraid to get trans­port out­side be­cause we can’t just walk on the street just like that. Some­times we have to ob­serve who wants the ser­vice be­cause we can’t trust every­body,” she said.

Cumana al­so com­plained about the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion which has cre­at­ed its own prob­lems.

“We work­ing by ap­point­ments. Some­times we lost the client be­cause the traf­fic is a lot of prob­lems for peo­ple to reach here and the mall have a time to close,” she said.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Ch­agua­nas was named by Span­ish set­tlers in the 18th cen­tu­ry for the in­dige­nous peo­ples that lived there. It is now the largest of the five bor­oughs in Trinidad and has the most Span­ish-speak­ing res­i­dents in the coun­try.

Con­trolled by the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC), it is the fastest-grow­ing town in T&T, boast­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120,000 burgess­es and a vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of around 110,000, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, there have been no sta­tis­tics from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in the last 12 years to val­i­date this da­ta.

Oc­to­ber will mark 33 years since Ch­agua­nas was el­e­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a bor­ough. Be­fore that, it was a part of the Coun­ty of Ca­roni.

Lo­cat­ed north of the cen­tral moun­tain range, Ch­agua­nas is a low-ly­ing area just up­stream from the Ca­roni swamps. It is bor­dered by the Hon­da Riv­er to the south, the Cunu­pia Riv­er to the east and the coast­line to the west com­pris­ing the main town, rur­al vil­lages and sub­ur­ban ar­eas. This may ex­plain the flood­ing that has been a con­sis­tent prob­lem. Agri­cul­tur­al lands al­so fall with­in the bound­aries of the Bor­ough giv­ing a rur­al char­ac­ter.

Ch­agua­nas is made up of a ma­jor­i­ty East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion with Afro-Trinida­di­an and mixed-race peo­ple be­ing a small­er cross-sec­tion of the de­mo­graph­ic. And de­spite the large num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als oc­cu­py­ing the space, the Bor­ough has seen a low vot­er turnout con­sis­tent­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), in 2019 34.49 per cent of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion ex­er­cised their fran­chise for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE). In the CBC, 26,059 peo­ple cast their bal­lots out of 68,703 elec­tors. This marked a turnout of 37.9 per cent which is high­er than the na­tion­al av­er­age.

Since the last LGE in 2019, the CBC has re­ceived an av­er­age of $74 mil­lion each year to run its af­fairs. For fis­cal 2023, the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived $79.84 mil­lion in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture. This is five per cent of the to­tal lo­cal gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tion which works out to an av­er­age of around $883.97 in re­cur­rent fund­ing per Ch­agua­nas res­i­dent in fis­cal 2023. How­ev­er, May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed said this is sim­ply not enough.

“Once we had that de­crease in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, it be­came very dif­fi­cult to main­tain ma­chin­ery. Right now, we have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ma­chin­ery down in the Cor­po­ra­tion. An­oth­er thing is to get mon­ey to buy ma­te­ri­als. We used to get up­wards of $100 mil­lion. If we get the gov­ern­ment to in­vest in Ch­agua­nas. If you think Ch­agua­nas is grow­ing now, we will grow even more,” he said.

Con­tin­ues on page 9

How­ev­er, Stacey Mur­phy, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for Ed­in­burgh/Long­denville South – the on­ly seat the par­ty con­trols out of the eight in the CBC – said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has failed Ch­agua­nas res­i­dents.

She said the al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment has not been man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly and lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is re­quired to al­low the may­or to have greater ac­cess to re­sources as op­posed to the CEO.

“In or­der to have more au­ton­o­my we need a change, and we need lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form to en­able the bor­ough or cor­po­ra­tions to ac­cess those fund­ing in­ter­nal­ly. Peo­ple need to know that the cor­po­ra­tion has been get­ting re­leas­es from the gov­ern­ment. The prob­lem is poor man­age­ment,” she said.

Mur­phy al­so claimed her pre­de­ces­sor, PNM coun­cil­lor Janelle Joe-Ryan, who re­tained the seat for the last nine years, did not re­ceive a fair al­lo­ca­tion by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion.

“The cor­po­ra­tion would have put more re­sources in their UNC ar­eas as op­posed to our PNM ar­eas,” she said.

In this elec­tion, Joe-Ryan is one of the can­di­dates nom­i­nat­ed to be a PNM al­der­man.

Mean­while, Mo­hammed com­plained about the lack of man­pow­er in the bor­ough to ad­dress crime.

“We were promised to have 100 mu­nic­i­pal po­lice come on board. Since that day that promise was made, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20-some­thing po­lice came on board and that promise was made ap­prox­i­mate­ly four or five years ago,” he said.

The may­or said to be more ef­fec­tive, the cor­po­ra­tion re­quires man­pow­er, ma­chin­ery, mon­ey and ma­te­r­i­al. He al­so stressed about an “at­tack” on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“We have an at­tack on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty with­in Ch­agua­nas. So, we have a lot of rob­beries tak­ing place in those busi­ness­es and a lot of home in­va­sions start­ed hap­pen­ing re­cent­ly,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) Bal­dath Ma­haraj agreed that busi­ness own­ers are un­der threat from crim­i­nal el­e­ments. He said ex­tor­tion and traf­fic have neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions.

“Ch­agua­nas is un­der siege. What we see in the news­pa­pers is in no way close to what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens. Crime is a ma­jor, ma­jor is­sue. We have been get­ting re­ports that busi­ness­men have to pay hush mon­ey not to be at­tacked. Some busi­ness­men may re­sist and come to us, some would sim­ply pay that mon­ey, some who can’t pay that mon­ey some­times they are at­tacked or their lives are threat­ened,” he said.

Ma­haraj called on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to re­think the staffing at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.

As for traf­fic, the CCIC pres­i­dent said a re­cent meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port (MoWT) saw the cham­ber pro­pose an over­pass near Heart­land Plaza, an ex­it to the high­way from the Ed­in­burgh fly­over, the widen­ing of the road­way near PriceS­mart and oth­er ad­just­ments.

In the lead-up to LGE on Au­gust 14, it is un­clear which of the three po­lit­i­cal par­ties – the PNM, UNC or Re-Unit­ed Farmer’s Al­liance (RFA) – will be vic­to­ri­ous as the bor­ough has had a check­ered past.

In 2013, the PNM won three seats, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship won three and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) two. Things changed in 2016 when the ILP fell off leav­ing the UNC to gain five seats and the PNM three. This was par­tial­ly pos­si­ble be­cause the in­cum­bent may­or was ex­pelled by the ILP, leav­ing him to join forces with the UNC. Fast for­ward to 2019, the UNC amassed sev­en seats while the PNM re­tained one, some by as few as 10 votes.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Hamid Ghany put a sober­ing per­spec­tive on po­ten­tial shifts in vot­ing be­hav­iour pat­terns con­sid­er­ing mi­gra­tion to Ch­agua­nas. He cau­tioned against as­sum­ing peo­ple’s po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ences are based on race.

“It is al­ways dan­ger­ous to try to pre­sume us­ing eth­nic­i­ty as a yard­stick when clear­ly the his­to­ry has shown that vot­ers are not al­ways mo­ti­vat­ed by that. And there is per­haps this myth­i­cal sense that there is trib­al vot­ing and so on in Trinidad and that some­how, we can pre­dict out­comes on the ba­sis of eth­nic­i­ty and clus­ters of per­sons when there is clear ev­i­dence that shows oth­er­wise,” he said.

“In the Ch­agua­nas area, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the ev­i­dence of Jack Warn­er and the ILP in 2013 de­fies the en­tire race ar­gu­ment that has been used over the years to speak about peo­ple in that area who are ex­pect­ed to vote like ro­bots, one way or the oth­er,” he added.

Mean­while, RFA leader Davi­ca Thomas said her par­ty in­tends to tack­le crime in the bor­ough by in­creas­ing foot pa­trols. Among the oth­er is­sues she hopes to ad­dress are food se­cu­ri­ty, chal­lenges af­fect­ing fish­er­men, in­fra­struc­ture such as the mar­ket fa­cil­i­ty, traf­fic, health, and flood­ing. She al­so in­tends to lob­by for VSEP pack­ages for for­mer Ca­roni work­ers.

There are eight elec­toral dis­tricts up for grab, name­ly Char­lieville, Cunu­pia, Ed­in­burgh/Long­denville South, En­ter­prise North/Es­mer­al­da, Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our, Mon­trose, Munroe Road/Ca­roni Sa­van­nah and En­ter­prise South/Long­denville North.