Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Moru­ga/Table­land Michelle Ben­jamin says state­ments made by Min­is­ter of Sport Sham­fa Cud­joe fol­low­ing the bud­get are "un­for­tu­nate, un­be­liev­able and un­couth." 

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from MP  Ben­jamin:

Just a few ad­jec­tives to de­scribe the cold and cal­lous state­ments made by the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe yes­ter­day at the open­ing of the Tacarigua Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. 

The head­line of the ar­ti­cle is en­ti­tled “Sham­fa Cries Shame,” but it is with a ‘cry­ing shame’ that this Cab­i­net Mem­ber sim­ply does not un­der­stand the re­mit of her port­fo­lio which is to up­lift cit­i­zens who con­tribute to their com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly those who con­tribute freely, for no fi­nan­cial gain, but out of the good­ness of their heart.  

Min­is­ter Cud­joe, there are peo­ple who would have con­tributed to knit­ting the fab­ric of this coun­try to­geth­er and would not have re­ceived any fi­nan­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion for it. They did it out of love for coun­try. Does that mean their con­tri­bu­tion is for nought?  

Does that mean in their gold­en years their labour should be seen as a fledg­ing thought? Then there are those, be­cause of a myr­i­ad of cir­cum­stances, may not have been able be for­mal­ly em­ployed, but they toiled in oth­er ways to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.  

The Min­is­ter through her con­de­scend­ing words, has demon­strat­ed that she is part of a gov­ern­ment, that looks down on those peo­ple who are not part of the for­mal sec­tor, who by virtue of their mean­ing­ful work to de­vel­op this coun­try are not leg­i­ble for a pen­sion and as a re­sult they, more than oth­ers, should be grate­ful that they are even be­ing con­sid­ered for a pen­sion.  

It is more than pass­ing strange that a Min­is­ter for Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment seems to be out of touch with the found­ing prin­ci­ples of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are all fa­mil­iar with “gayap,” “sou sou,” where through these ef­forts of com­mu­nal sup­port, per­sons in the rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and towns across this coun­try not on­ly sus­tained their fam­i­lies but al­so helped build com­mu­ni­ties. The Min­is­ter should not look down on these cit­i­zens.  

Is it that the min­is­ter is say­ing the home­mak­ers, women who spent time build­ing the fam­i­ly, build­ing, and prepar­ing the doc­tors and lawyers and teach­ers, and sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties we have to­day, that they de­serve less? They do not de­serve a pen­sion? If any­thing, they de­serve more be­cause if it were not for them, many of those who sit in po­si­tions of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty to­day would not have been where they are if it were not for their labour of love.  

This is a clear in­di­ca­tion of this Gov­ern­ment’s dis­dain for the av­er­age, hard­work­ing cit­i­zens and the true pa­tri­ots of this coun­try. Fur­ther­more, the Min­is­ter is talk­ing about sac­ri­fice. While she may be able swipe her card and buy any­thing her heart de­sires, ba­sic food items are be­yond the reach for the av­er­age cit­i­zen be­cause of the dra­con­ian poli­cies of this Gov­ern­ment, where the on­ly plan is to make the rich get rich­er with noth­ing trick­ling down to the poor, ex­cept of course hav­ing to pay for their bad de­ci­sions.  

Case in point, the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, the fifth price in­crease of fu­el that we are bur­dened with to­day, lack of text­books in schools, ab­sence of CDAP med­ica­tions in hos­pi­tals, run-down fa­cil­i­ties at many schools, the poor road net­work that we are tasked to op­er­ate on, and the list goes on and on. In­stead of talk­ing down to cit­i­zens, the Min­is­ter for Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment should come to the com­mu­ni­ties in our na­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence first-hand the suf­fer­ing of fam­i­lies who are suf­fer­ing. The Min­is­ter owes it to the pop­u­la­tion to is­sue a clear and un­equiv­o­cal apol­o­gy.