KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er
@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, Kei­th Scot­land, spent his Christ­mas morn­ing giv­ing back to his con­stituents dur­ing his sixth an­nu­al Christ­mas Soup Kitchen on George Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Scot­land, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 peo­ple were fed. This, he said, was a ma­jor in­crease this year due to a rise in un­em­ploy­ment at the hands of the Gov­ern­ment.

Scot­land told Guardian Me­dia that the can­cel­la­tion of pro­grammes like Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) has had a ma­jor ef­fect on his con­stituents.

“I think we have crossed about 1,000 peo­ple in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the soup kitchen. As you can see, this is a se­ri­ous meal we’re pro­vid­ing here. This year, I’ve seen an in­crease, and I’m here to meet that in­crease once Pa­pa God bless­es me. The econ­o­my has tak­en a blow. The can­celling of CEPEP and URP has af­fect­ed Port-of-Spain South in an acute way,” Scot­land said.

More than a one-off meal, Scot­land said he has pro­grammes in the pipeline to as­sist those in need.

“I’m hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions where it doesn’t mat­ter who is in pow­er; we would be in­de­pen­dent and not be af­fect­ed neg­a­tive­ly by that. I have pro­grammes...I in­tend to roll them out even in Op­po­si­tion in the com­ing year... Un­der the lead­er­ship of Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, we will do what we have to do to bring Trinidad back to where its sup­posed to be.”

He al­so called on the coun­try to unite.

“There’s a lot hap­pen­ing to our young peo­ple. We in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, we un­der­stand your chal­lenges. It is a dif­fer­ent time. You face dif­fer­ent chal­lenges, but we em­brace those chal­lenges with you. To the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I say to you, we have to be to­geth­er. We can­not be frag­ment­ed as a coun­try. When one seg­ment is dis­en­fran­chised, the en­tire Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fers. Don’t think be­cause you’re in a si­lo that, you know, well, it’s them and not us. It al­ways has been we. Since Er­ic Williams, he un­der­stood that with Mr Capildeo. They un­der­stood that it has to be ‘we.’ And if there’s no we in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we will not suc­ceed. And I want us to suc­ceed as a coun­try.”

He al­so had a mes­sage for To­ba­go. “To To­ba­go, I say, choose well, be­cause you don’t need us to read and spell for you. You see what has hap­pened. You see who’s in charge, and I say no more,” he said.