Sur­prised but pleased af­ter learn­ing that a com­mit­tee had been con­vened to look at re­nam­ing na­tion­al spaces and even roads af­ter lo­cal he­roes in­stead of those re­gard­ed as colo­nial tyrants and slav­ery ad­vo­cates, Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project Di­rec­tor Shaba­ka Kam­bon yes­ter­day cred­it­ed the au­thor­i­ties for tak­ing that for­ward step.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day dis­closed that an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee had been set up by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sev­er­al months ago, to ex­am­ine and move this process along.

Re­veal­ing this as he de­liv­ered re­marks dur­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain, he said, “They are look­ing around at our na­tion­al spaces and our roads with a view of trans­form­ing the names to ones that we would bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate and recog­nise.”

Re­spond­ing to this al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, Kam­bon said that his group had been, “prepar­ing a cam­paign in Au­gust to in­crease and aug­ment our ac­tivism in the coun­try.”

He said it had been al­most two years since they had pe­ti­tioned the Par­lia­ment to iden­ti­fy and re­pur­pose any mon­u­ments/stat­ues and signs/sym­bols that glo­ri­fy or cel­e­brate racism and white su­prema­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In 2020, the group pe­ti­tioned Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez call­ing for the re­moval of the Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue from Tamarind Square—but to date, noth­ing has been done.

“Per­haps it was just the pan­dem­ic that the gov­ern­ment had to fo­cus on oth­er things,” Kam­bon added, “Now we are hap­py to hear that there is in fact some move­ment for­ward on the part of the au­thor­i­ties…we just need the de­tails now.”

Hinds said both the Caribbean Free­dom Project of which Kam­bon’s group is a part, as well as the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee will be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions.

Kam­bon ex­cit­ed the crowd as he said the pro­pos­al to re­name Ox­ford Street af­ter Kwame Ture was al­ready on the ta­ble.

Yes­ter­day’s an­nounce­ment comes on the heels of a move by the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um in Cardiff to re­move the por­trait of Thomas Pic­ton—the 18th-cen­tu­ry Welsh mil­i­tary leader who be­came no­to­ri­ous for the cru­el­ty of his reign as gov­er­nor of Trinidad from 1797-1803, from the main dis­play to that of less­er promi­nence.

Pic­ton’s lega­cy is now marred by dis­clo­sures that he au­tho­rised 35 ex­e­cu­tions in Trinidad dur­ing his gov­er­nor­ship.

Sev­er­al places in Trinidad were named af­ter the tyrant in­clud­ing Pic­ton, Laven­tille; Fort Pic­ton, Laven­tille; Pic­ton Court Apart­ments, PoS; Pic­ton Road, San­gre Grande; Pic­ton Street, Wood­brook and San Juan; Pic­ton Street and Pic­ton Street Ext., Di­a­mond and Pic­ton Street and Set­tle­ment, Es­per­ance.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell urged the na­tion to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments of its African an­ces­tors who had en­dured much pain and suf­fer­ing, but al­so man­aged to cre­ate a rich and won­der­ful ta­pes­try.

Pleased to note the num­ber of young peo­ple who con­tin­ued to up­hold the African tra­di­tions, he said, “To­day’s bondages are quite dif­fer­ent from what our an­ces­tors ex­pe­ri­enced.”

He ad­vised, “It is our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as their el­ders, to in­still val­ues that em­pow­er them to step out in­to the world with an un­shake­able sense of iden­ti­ty.

“Let us en­cour­age our youths to look back be­fore they forge for­ward, to ac­knowl­edge those shoul­ders up­on which they stand to­day.”

In re­call­ing the strug­gles of African an­ces­tors to es­tab­lish them­selves and the fight for free­dom, Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing this set of peo­ple con­tin­ued to im­prove their cir­cum­stances.

Re­fer­ring to the ap­pli­ca­tions Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived for State lands to be used for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es, he ad­mit­ted, “We did not see African peo­ple among the en­thu­si­asts in that re­gard.”

Hinds as­sured, how­ev­er, “We have tak­en ac­tion as a Gov­ern­ment and as a Cab­i­net, to en­sure that when we deal with these ap­pli­ca­tions, we see eq­ui­ty and we see bal­ance and that is hap­pen­ing now.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was un­able to at­tend the event af­ter he con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus.