sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says res­i­dents of Moru­ga and Table­land can look for­ward to a new fire sta­tion and health cen­tre if the PNM wins the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Since 2020, res­i­dents have been clam­our­ing for a fire sta­tion fol­low­ing a spate of fires in the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at the St Mary’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School on Sat­ur­day night, Young pledged that his ad­min­is­tra­tion would give “ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion” to these projects, high­light­ing the par­ty’s fo­cus on rur­al de­vel­op­ment.

“I have your in­com­ing MP ask­ing and ad­vo­cat­ing very strong­ly for a new fire sta­tion and health­care cen­tre,” Young told an en­thu­si­as­tic crowd.

“You put Lisa [At­wa­ter] in of­fice and you put this PNM gov­ern­ment back in of­fice, and on April 29, a cab­i­net that I will be ho­n­oured to ap­point and lead for Trinidad and To­ba­go will give ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion to a fire sta­tion and a new health cen­tre for Moru­ga/Table­land,” he said to loud cheers.

Young em­pha­sised the PNM’s plans for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on youth, ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty up­lift­ment. Among the ini­tia­tives he out­lined were the mod­erni­sa­tion of agri­cul­ture, the in­tro­duc­tion of fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and en­tre­pre­neur­ship in schools, and the con­struc­tion of new schools, in­clud­ing one in La Hor­quet­ta.

“In this man­i­festo, we fo­cus heav­i­ly on our youth,” Young said of the PNM man­i­festo which was launched last week.

“We will re­form the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem—dig­i­tal and tech­no­log­i­cal in­te­gra­tion is go­ing to be­come a key com­po­nent. We want to em­pow­er our cit­i­zens to be­come landown­ers. That is PNM pol­i­cy.”

He al­so promised job cre­ation and lo­cal in­vest­ment in HDC com­mu­ni­ties, stat­ing: “Every sin­gle HDC com­mu­ni­ty across Trinidad, you will be em­ployed, you will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment. You will de­liv­er in your com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mean­while, At­wa­ter said Moru­ga has lush re­sources but suf­fers from in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges.

“Moru­ga is rich in agri­cul­ture and cul­ture, but like many rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, we face sub­stan­tial chal­lenges,” At­wa­ter said.

She praised the PNM’s ef­forts in up­grad­ing roads, util­i­ties, and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties in the area, and high­light­ed mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ments in agri­cul­ture and fish­eries, in­clud­ing a $62 mil­lion fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty and plans for val­ue-added pro­cess­ing.

“The PNM un­der­stands our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage and what is unique to us so we are cre­at­ing the in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port and de­vel­op our farm­ing and fish­ing in­dus­tries,” she said.

She al­so urged res­i­dents not to be swayed by mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“Don’t let any­one tell you noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. There are peo­ple ad­vo­cat­ing for us, and we must cap­i­talise on the projects and make them work for us,” she said.

She said over $250 mil­lion has been spent on slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion in Moru­ga over the past 10 years. She al­so said be­cause of the un­sta­ble soil type and fre­quent slip­pages, the bus ser­vice has been dis­rupt­ed, but she said there are maxi taxis ply­ing the area.

At­wa­ter said she hopes to con­tin­ue hous­ing and home­work cen­tres in the Moru­ga/Table­land re­gion so that youths can con­tin­ue to get train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion.

The Princes Town Fire Sta­tion was of­fi­cial­ly closed on Ju­ly 12, 2024, af­ter the build­ing was deemed un­in­hab­it­able. In re­sponse, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice im­ple­ment­ed a cov­er­age plan util­is­ing sur­round­ing fire sta­tions to main­tain emer­gency ser­vices in the area.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al fires have oc­curred in re­cent times, in­clud­ing one at the con­stituen­cy of­fice of Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin in De­cem­ber 2020. On March 11, 2024, Wen­dell Cal­len­der, 28, of Main­got Trace in Basse Terre Vil­lage, died on March 11 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing burned dur­ing a fire at his home. Three months lat­er on June 17, 2024, a fire gut­ted the home of An­na Bal­bosa in St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga, leav­ing her and her three chil­dren home­less.