Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Fos­ter Cum­mings, has de­fend­ed his work as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the face of an at­tack from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), not­ing that his ex­pe­ri­ence and ef­forts in the con­stituen­cy speak for them­selves.

The at­tack on his tenure in the con­stituen­cy came from UNC deputy leader Jear­lean John dur­ing a meet­ing in the con­stituen­cy on Sat­ur­day night.

John ques­tioned his will­ing­ness to help his con­stituents, while ac­cus­ing him of shirk­ing his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as an MP.

Speak­ing to sup­port­ers at the Las Lo­mas #2 Recre­ation Grounds, John who lost the seat to Cum­mings in the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, ac­cused him of on­ly help­ing con­stituents if he felt he could ben­e­fit.

Re­call­ing her ef­forts to help vic­tims of flood­ing, John said de­spite the crit­i­cism it at­tract­ed, she was con­fi­dent de­liv­er­ing ap­pli­ances to those in need was not in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour, as she did not ask for any­thing in re­turn.

“I went to a la­dy in La­dy­bird Av­enue, she say look how my fridge float­ing away, but that’s okay it had noth­ing in it any­way. Cum­mings hate those kind of peo­ple,” John said.

“So, Good Samar­i­tans in the UNC came and sent some ap­pli­ances, so I took it to them as a good UNC ... be your neigh­bour’s keep­er. They have it as some­thing I did that was wrong, how dare you Cum­mings?”

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for com­ment via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Cum­mings said he would al­low his work to speak for him.

“My on­ly com­ment on that is no mat­ter what the UNC said last night, is licks like peas on April 28th. My work speaks for it­self and we will in­crease our mar­gin of vic­to­ry in La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro.”

Dur­ing sev­er­al ap­pear­ances at PNM meet­ings, Cum­mings has de­fend­ed his work, high­light­ing var­i­ous ini­tia­tives not on­ly from his Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice but al­so via his role as MP.

Dur­ing a meet­ing last week, Cum­mings cit­ed the con­struc­tion of the La Hor­quet­ta Pub­lic Li­brary to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy and a sod-turn­ing for the con­struc­tion of a youth de­vel­op­ment cen­tre for vo­ca­tion­al train­ing pro­grammes aimed at young peo­ple.

“We are tak­ing our young peo­ple off the streets away from idle­ness and un­pro­duc­tive be­hav­iour and we’re prepar­ing them for a pro­duc­tive life,” he said then.

At that same meet­ing, Cum­mings al­so not­ed that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the con­struc­tion of a sec­ondary school in La Hor­quet­ta at a bud­get of $200 mil­lion.