KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (MP) for Trinci­ty/Mal­oney Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is fir­ing back at Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der af­ter he blamed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for what he de­scribed as de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in Mal­oney.

Re­ject­ing his claims of ne­glect by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Robin­son-Reg­is said projects were mov­ing for­ward be­fore the change of gov­ern­ment last April. She added that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment must now an­swer to the peo­ple.

She said the Gov­ern­ment should stop mak­ing ex­cus­es and play­ing the blame game and start de­liv­er­ing.

In a post to so­cial me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said, “The peo­ple of Trinci­ty/Mal­oney have heard enough. The min­is­ter’s re­cent vis­it and com­ments are noth­ing more than plat­i­tudes, pre­tence and ole talk. They can­not erase the re­al­i­ty that the peo­ple of this con­stituen­cy have been liv­ing every sin­gle day since this Gov­ern­ment took of­fice. The res­i­dents are not ask­ing for sym­pa­thy; they are ask­ing for ac­tion.”

She added, “The peo­ple have every right to ask why. From where I stand, it is dif­fi­cult not to con­clude that po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have been al­lowed to take prece­dence over the in­ter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty. What­ev­er the rea­son, it is the peo­ple who are pay­ing the price. That is un­ac­cept­able. This is not gov­er­nance; it is a trav­es­ty. Fur­ther, to send Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Phillip Alexan­der, who no­body takes se­ri­ous­ly, to vis­it Mal­oney just for ole talk and pho­to ops is an in­sult and an ex­er­cise in time wast­ing.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area last week, res­i­dents com­plained of sev­er­al is­sues in­clud­ing de­te­ri­o­rat­ing hous­ing con­di­tions, poor main­te­nance and in­fra­struc­ture con­cerns to the min­is­ter.