Raphael John-Lall

Four ma­jor can­di­dates for the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral con­stituen­cy spoke to Guardian Me­dia about their plans for the de­vel­op­ment of the area if elect­ed in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

The seat has been a tra­di­tion­al Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) strong­hold since 2007.

The out­go­ing PNM MP is Dar­ryl Smith, who won the seat in 2015 with a land­slide vic­to­ry of 77 per cent of the vote.

Ac­cord­ing to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) records, a to­tal of 17,214 valid votes were cast in the con­stituen­cy, with Smith cop­ping 13,258 votes.

In the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, the suc­cess­ful can­di­date for the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral con­stituen­cy was Dr Amery Brown who won with 9,040 votes. He was first elect­ed in that con­stituen­cy in 2007.

Some of the biggest chal­lenges that the con­stituen­cy faces in­clude crime, un­em­ploy­ment, and lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties for youth ac­cord­ing to the can­di­dates con­test­ing this year’s elec­tion.

UNC

John Laquis, can­di­date for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral said he in­tends to cut away the tra­di­tion­al bu­reau­cra­cy to solve the prob­lems of Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral and every­thing he does will be peo­ple-fo­cused.

Laquis is a busi­ness­man and has over 40 years of lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence in the oil ma­rine, au­to­mo­tive, and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­tries. 

One of the prob­lems the con­stituen­cy faces is garbage and clogged rivers and drains. To solve this, he wants to see new com­pa­nies formed to deal with col­lect­ing garbage. He will en­cour­age mem­bers of his con­stituen­cy to form their own com­pa­ny af­ter which they will be al­lowed to ten­der for projects to keep the area clean.

He al­so iden­ti­fied un­em­ploy­ment as a ma­jor prob­lem and al­though he said he is not will­ing to give de­tails as yet, he has plans to solve un­em­ploy­ment. Laquis has been go­ing from door to door meet­ing and talk­ing with con­stituents and he is con­fi­dent that he will win the seat.

PNM

Symon de No­bri­ga, can­di­date for the PNM, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, who is chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, wants to im­pact the young peo­ple of the con­stituen­cy, by giv­ing them the tools they need to ex­press them­selves ful­ly as en­tre­pre­neurs, as cre­atives, and in agri­cul­ture.

He said he has al­ready had the frame­work for a lec­ture se­ries geared to­wards young and new busi­ness own­ers that com­bine skills train­ing in ar­eas such as ac­count­ing, ef­fec­tive use of so­cial me­dia, and pro­pos­al de­vel­op­ment with lead­er­ship train­ing and men­tor­ship ses­sions.

Com­ing from the back­ground of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment he be­lieves as a par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive, he can sup­port the coun­cil­lors in the con­stituen­cy in their en­deav­ors as well.

He said he is ex­cit­ed to work with the var­i­ous min­istries who im­pact the work of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

He high­light­ed suc­cess­ful projects the PMM car­ried out in the area for the last last five years which in­clud­ed the Diego Mar­tin Sport­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, the walkover at Four Roads, the Diego Mar­tin Health Fa­cil­i­ty and the nu­mer­ous com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres that have been built.

MND

Garvin Nicholas, leader, Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND), and can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral said the de­vel­op­ment plan that they have is not on­ly for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral but al­so for the en­tire Diego Mar­tin area.

Nicholas, along with two oth­er mem­bers of his par­ty, will con­test the Diego Mar­tin seats.

Nicholas, who is from a le­gal back­ground is a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment and a for­mer High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010-2015 when he served as a non-elect­ed mem­ber of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, he suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied to have the Paramin RC con­struct­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to its 2020 man­i­festo, the MND will tack­le the prob­lem of food se­cu­ri­ty through work­ing with farm­ers and fish­er­folk en­tre­pre­neurs to en­sure that they use the lat­est tech­nolo­gies to pro­duce the health­i­est and most af­ford­able food for con­sumers.

The MND in­tends to al­lo­cate 40-60 per cent of pro­cure­ment bud­gets to mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es and this will al­low them to build ca­pac­i­ty, em­ploy more peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and con­tribute to the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion.

If elect­ed they in­tend to use tourism is an­oth­er key pil­lar for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion as Diego Mar­tin is ide­al for the de­vel­op­ment of a range of prod­ucts in the eco-tourism, yacht­ing, cul­tur­al, sport, and des­ti­na­tion tourism sec­tors, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a cruise ship hub.

PEP

Fe­li­cia Hold­er, the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, said wa­ter, in­fra­struc­ture and un­em­ploy­ment are some of the prob­lems that she wants to tar­get if she is elect­ed.

Hold­er, whose pro­fes­sion­al back­ground is in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor, said there is a so­cial di­vi­sion be­tween the af­flu­ent parts of Diego Mar­tin and the poor­er parts.

She said in the Co­co Jah area, res­i­dents are com­plain­ing that they do not have wa­ter and that is one ma­jor area she in­tends to fo­cus on by hav­ing a de­cen­tral­ized wa­ter man­age­ment sys­tem.

Her in­ten­tion is to cre­ate more jobs in the area through skills train­ing as she be­lieves that some youths have no “hope and op­por­tu­ni­ty.”