RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is on the brink of be­com­ing South Trinidad’s newest bor­ough but de­spite the im­pend­ing change in sta­tus, many burgess­es are ex­press­ing doubts about the long-term ben­e­fits this will bring to the area.

With a pop­u­la­tion of near­ly 87,000 res­i­dents, the cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for 63 com­mu­ni­ties stretch­ing from Ica­cos to Erin with­in a 51,000-hectare land mass.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the re­gion on Thurs­day, res­i­dents shared a mix of ex­cite­ment and scep­ti­cism re­gard­ing the move.

Ja­son Lochan, who sells fruits at the side of San Fran­cique Road, said Siparia’s in­fra­struc­ture has to be up­grad­ed be­fore it could be­come a bor­ough.

“They need to fix the road and the drains. Here, we have plen­ty of flood­ing. We al­so do not have street­lights and these days we get­ting a lot of rob­beries too,” Lochan re­vealed.

Bal­li­ram Lookhoor, al­so known as Jok­er, said he could not find a job. He al­so com­plained about the state of the roads.

When told that bor­ough sta­tus would mean more ac­cess to pub­lic funds and more mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, both men said they hoped the new sta­tus will bring im­prove­ments.

But Ri­car­do Ra­jku­mar, of Siparia, said he was not hope­ful that life will im­prove.

“How is this go­ing to ben­e­fit us? How will the poor man ben­e­fit? I don’t think this will make any dif­fer­ence,” Ra­jku­mar said.

He not­ed that some parts of Siparia are crip­pled by a wa­ter cri­sis.

Busi­ness­women Seema Ram­lochan agreed with Ra­jku­mar.

“In Sun­rees Road, we don’t get wa­ter for weeks and some­times for months. We hope that the cor­po­ra­tion will get its act to­geth­er once we be­come a bor­ough and fix the roads, drains and al­so deal with crime,” she added.

Wa­ter short­ages have been a long­stand­ing is­sue in the re­gion, with spo­radic protests sev­er­al times over the years.

Mean­while, at Ban­wari Trace, where the old­est pre-Columbian ar­chae­o­log­i­cal site is lo­cat­ed, res­i­dents ex­pressed hope that bor­ough sta­tus will bring more com­mu­ni­ty tourism.

Ham­let Har­ryper­sad, who has been the care­tak­er of the Ban­wari site for over 20 years be­fore it was hand­ed over to the Na­tion­al Trust, said he was hap­py for the new changes.

“We need a lot of things in this area. Apart from prop­er de­vel­op­ment of this site, we need bet­ter roads and bet­ter drains,” he said.

The site is the old­est in the west­ern hemi­sphere and dates back to 5000 B.C and is where the hu­man re­mains of Trinidad’s old­est res­i­dent were found by ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris.

Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Di­nesh Sankers­ingh said apart from the Ban­wari Trace site, they planned to up­grade the beach­es in the con­stituen­cy.

Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh said he want­ed a beach­front board­walk in Ce­dros and boats for recre­ation, as well as vend­ing ar­eas in Ce­dros, Ica­cos La­goon, and Colum­bus Bay. There are var­i­ous his­toric sites at the Gal­far beach end and oth­er ar­eas of in­ter­est that could de­vel­op our econ­o­my, Teelucks­ingh said. He called for a new Ce­dros mar­ket to ac­com­mo­date small busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing ven­dors, bar­bers and hair­dressers.

“We want a fire sta­tion built in Ce­dros and the de­vel­op­ment of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex to ac­com­mo­date a lo­cal wa­ter taxi ser­vice from Port-of-Spain to Ce­dros. A yacht­ing dock as well as the es­tab­lish­ment of small ho­tels in the penin­su­la,” Teelucks­ingh added.

The res­i­dents say on­ly time will tell if the new bor­ough sta­tus will bring ben­e­fit to them, or mere­ly be a sym­bol­ic ges­ture with­out mean­ing­ful change.

The Diego Mar­tin and Siparia Regi­nal Cor­po­ra­tions are both ex­pect­ed to be grant­ed bor­ough sta­tus. Diego Mar­tin has 88,000 peo­ple. The cor­po­ra­tion passed a res­o­lu­tion to seek bor­ough sta­tus on May 2, 2019, while the Siparia cor­po­ra­tion al­so passed a res­o­lu­tion on Jan­u­ary 21, 2019.