Bap­tists in To­ba­go made a heart­felt ap­peal for mon­ey to com­plete its wor­ship fa­cil­i­ties at Sig­nal Hill. Calls for as­sis­tance came from Mur­al Dil­lion, the pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Unit­ed Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist As­sem­bly yes­ter­day when they held their 68th lib­er­a­tion cel­e­bra­tions and 23rd an­niver­sary as a pub­lic hol­i­day. The event took place at Sig­nal Hill un­der tents placed on the foun­da­tion of the struc­ture.

Dil­lion said the as­sem­bly has so far spent close to $2 mil­lion to lay the foun­da­tion. He said on May 13, 2019, reg­u­lar meet­ings of the as­sem­bly would re­sume where the fi­nances for the project would be dis­cussed. He said "All who have ques­tions and would like to know how the dol­lars go­ing, come, you are wel­comed. All who have doubts come let us go through the thing with a fine-tooth comb and if we recog­nise any mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds, trust me, the po­lice in me can come out, we will deal with it. No­body ent mak­ing no jail, be­cause I know the funds were well tak­en care of."

He said it was the vi­sion of the as­sem­bly that the first floor would be cast by the end of June and the ground floor walls would be erect­ed by De­cem­ber. Dil­lion said he was hope­ful that by the time cel­e­bra­tions come around next year it would be held in air-con­di­tioned fa­cil­i­ties.

Dil­lion called on the con­gre­ga­tion to give and oth­ers to part­ner with the as­sem­bly. He said "We're go­ing for­ward with faith. The Lord helps those who help them­selves, so we can't sit down and wait on the sec­re­tary and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, nei­ther Mr Row­ley and the PNM Gov­ern­ment to help us to keep lib­er­a­tion here."

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles ex­pressed sup­port for the Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty. Charles called on mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to re­flect and look at ways they can make pos­i­tive changes to so­ci­ety. He said "The time has come when we can no longer say it is no longer for the politi­cians, the min­is­ters, the teach­ers, the preach­ers. The time has come for in­di­vid­ual as­sess­ment, in­tro­spec­tion, and con­tri­bu­tion."