Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, has con­demned the lin­ger­ing stig­mas at­tached to East Port-of-Spain which she de­scribed as a tal­ent­ed com­mu­ni­ty. The com­ments were made in her ad­dress to grad­u­ates of the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EPOS) So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Pro­grammes (SEPs) for 2023.

As she ad­dressed those gath­ered last week, the Min­is­ter read ex­cerpts from two ar­ti­cles pub­lished in the lo­cal me­dia as ex­am­ples that showed the neg­a­tive views so­ci­ety still held to­wards those in the com­mu­ni­ty. The writ­ers of the ar­ti­cles called out for their “my­opic views” were Pro­fes­sor Theodore Lewis, and re­tired busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive, No­ble Philip.

“Dr Lewis, un­for­tu­nate­ly, on­ly found neg­a­tive things to say about east Port-of-Spain and about the peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain—that ar­ti­cle sad­dened me, be­cause it was not true. There were so many pos­i­tive things that EPOS is do­ing. And then there was an­oth­er ar­ti­cle by No­ble Phillip, who did not men­tion that the same Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor he was talk­ing about in the ar­ti­cle is a prod­uct of east Port-of-Spain. The pos­i­tives that have come out of east Port-of-Spain out­weigh any neg­a­tives about east Port-of-Spain,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

Al­so at­tend­ing the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza was EPOS Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Dr Deb­o­rah Thomas-Austin, who said she wit­nessed the great­ness in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“We have in­vest­ed al­most $9 mil­lion in the so­cial and eco­nom­ic pro­gramme for east Port-of-Spain in the fi­nan­cial year just tend­ed. Among our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties, we seek to achieve in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and en­hance so­cial ser­vices. Our so­cial and eco­nom­ic pro­grammes are al­so aligned to the Unit­ed Na­tions’ sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals. There is on­ly great­ness in east Port-of-Spain,” she said.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of Robin­son-Reg­is, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er, Don La Fou­cade, en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pants to be am­bas­sadors for their com­mu­ni­ties. He al­so urged them to tran­si­tion from be­ing em­ploy­ees to em­ploy­ers to main­tain their in­de­pen­dence.

“The skills you would’ve been taught in the pro­gramme is to help you stand on your own two feet in so­ci­ety. I am so fed up of when peo­ple talk about east Port-of-Spain that they on­ly talk about crime. I am fed up of it! Feel good about your­self, do you know how many peo­ple start but don’t fin­ish? You all have en­dured,” La Fou­cade said.

More than 100 grad­u­ates from east Port-of-Spain re­ceived cer­tifi­cates for suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing cours­es in EPOS’ So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Pro­grammes (SEPs) in­clud­ing NSEC Heavy Equip­ment Op­er­a­tion, Com­put­er Re­pairs and Main­te­nance, Be Your Own Boss, Hy­dro­pon­ics, and more.