"No work, no mon­ey, how are we to sur­vive?" That was the burn­ing ques­tion from the lips of al­most every youth in Tu­rure, San­gre Grande.

The young men and women, trou­bled by the fact that they are un­em­ployed, spoke to the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing the lock­down, just a week be­fore the State of Emer­gency came in­to ef­fect at mid­night last week Sat­ur­day.

They ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to hear their cries and lend a help­ing hand.

The youths, about 60 of them, are all skilled and cer­ti­fied–some are ma­sons, elec­tri­cal tech­ni­cians, plumbers, car­pen­ters, me­chan­ics and agri­cul­tur­ists with­out jobs or sus­tain­able ones.

"We are will­ing to work but are not for­tu­nate in ob­tain­ing jobs and if jobs be­come avail­able it is on­ly for three months," one young man said.

Most of them said they are still de­pen­dent on their par­ents to sur­vive, but as grown-ups, they want to be in­de­pen­dent. "We feel a sense of guilt when we on­ly have to take from our par­ents since child­hood and now adults, some of us are still liv­ing by our par­ents and it is no fault of ours," an­oth­er youth added.

"We can­not take care of our par­ents sim­ply be­cause we can­not get em­ploy­ment."

The youths claimed they were duped by the politi­cians dur­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion and were even paid to vote. "Rep­re­sen­ta­tives were seen day in and day out, but af­ter elec­tions, no one is to be seen," one youth said. "You know what hurts, they promised to have the Tu­rure Road paved by drop­ping off heavy ma­chin­ery for the re­pairs, but as soon as the elec­tion fin­ished the next week the equip­ment was re­moved.

"We re­mained as fools be­cause up to this date there is no sign of road paving be­gin­ning. We have learnt a les­son and de­cid­ed that come next elec­tion we will col­lect the mon­ey of­fered and vote for those who will care for us and not just dump us."

The youths are ap­peal­ing to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to stop play­ing pol­i­tics with their lives.

Be­ing left be­hind

Ri­car­do As­soon, a qual­i­fied elec­tri­cian and plumber said that while Tu­rure has been de­vel­op­ing rapid­ly they are still be­ing left be­hind.

Tu­rure is where state-owned ag­gre­gate quar­ry, the Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Ltd, is lo­cat­ed. The mined ag­gre­gate from the 2,040-acre sand and grav­el quar­ry is trans­port­ed by truck to the wash plants where it is washed, screened, sized, and processed. Ma­te­r­i­al for ma­jor con­struc­tion projects in T&T is ob­tained from the Tu­rure quar­ry.

Re­cent­ly Xtra Foods su­per­mar­ket opened its doors in the com­mu­ni­ty, a sign of progress. There is al­so a sec­ondary and a pri­ma­ry school in the area.

The young men and women com­plained that Na­tion­al Quar­ries em­ploy­ees, how­ev­er, come from out of the Tu­rure com­mu­ni­ty and if em­ploy­ment does be­come avail­able just a few of the youths are giv­en three-month con­tracts which are nev­er re­newed. "This is very un­fair to us," said As­soon.

Some of the youths have sent their ap­pli­ca­tion to Na­tion­al Quar­ries for al­most ten years and are still await­ing a re­sponse, they said.

Turn­ing over their pants pock­ets to show how broke they are, one youth said, "Look, we are dry, not a cent in our pock­ets. What you ex­pect us to do, ent we have to look for av­enues to get mon­ey which is es­sen­tial for our sur­vival?"

As­soon em­pha­sised, how­ev­er, "We not go­ing to get in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, we want to live a clean life and work for our mon­ey. We have reached the stage of frus­tra­tion and when the day comes we be­lieve that some­thing pos­i­tive is go­ing to come our way and make our lives worth liv­ing. We still have hope."

Shaw Fer­nan­dez, 26, said the youths of Tu­rure have been mak­ing re­quests for state lands so they can cul­ti­vate crops to put food on the ta­ble and even make a dol­lar by sell­ing the pro­duce. This re­quest has al­so borne no re­sults.

"Some of us at­tempt­ed to clear state lands to plant but were con­front­ed by Land Set­tle­ment Agency agents and were forced to va­cate the lands.

"To­day we are see­ing the state lands be­ing cleared, hous­es be­ing built and elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter pro­vid­ed not to Tu­rure res­i­dents but out­siders and noth­ing was done to them. They are all liv­ing com­fort­ably." Some res­i­dents said they have been wait­ing on WASA for their con­nec­tion for as long as five years and have not been able to get a potable sup­ply yet, but lament that res­i­dents of the squat­ting com­mu­ni­ty have been fa­cil­i­tat­ed with wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty.

The youths al­leged that politi­cians are in­volved in il­le­gal land grab­bing. "It is a mon­ey-mak­ing busi­ness and state lands are al­leged­ly be­ing sold for a big sum of mon­ey."

"Is this fair?" one dis­ap­point­ed youth asked.

"We born and bred in Tu­rure but can­not ben­e­fit from the em­ploy­ment of Na­tion­al Quar­ries or oc­cu­py state lands to sus­tain our lives. Things re­al­ly hard for us."

De­plorable road con­di­tions, heavy dust

Res­i­dent John Vin­cent said in ad­di­tion to un­em­ploy­ment they are faced with oth­er prob­lems such as de­plorable road con­di­tions, thick dust in the air, and noise pol­lu­tion.

When it is sun­ny their homes, trees and flower plants are cov­ered with dust left be­hind by the hun­dreds of trucks and heavy equip­ment that tra­verse the Tu­rure Road dai­ly.

The dust is so thick that "chil­dren, adults and the el­der­ly suf­fer from asth­ma, lung in­fec­tion and skin rash," a fe­male res­i­dent claimed. "Our health is at risk," she added.

Rum­bling noise from the trucks' heavy en­gines in the wee hours of the morn­ing dis­turb them from their rest as well. As the day pro­gress­es, the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens. Joanne Vin­cent, a moth­er of four, said the con­stant use of the road by the trucks and heavy equip­ment has caused the road­way to de­te­ri­o­rate with huge pot­holes.

"In the dry sea­son we eat­ing dust and in the rainy sea­son we are ex­posed to in­juries be­cause of the mix­ture of dust and wa­ter that makes the pave­ment murky and even the front of our homes slip­pery," a con­cerned res­i­dent said.

Leak­ing WASA lines, they claimed, are al­so re­spon­si­ble for a few res­i­dents be­com­ing in­jured. Some of the res­i­dents that slip and fell and suf­fered in­juries re­cent­ly in­clude Ri­car­do As­soon, Vil­da Williams, Kendell Camp­bell and Amyi­ah Moses who have con­tact­ed their at­tor­neys on the mat­ter.

"Peo­ple suf­fer­ing for wa­ter in the coun­try and here in Tu­rure Road there are four WASA leaks with thou­sands of gal­lons of wa­ter go­ing down the drain for over a year."

In ad­di­tion, Moses said five man­holes are not cov­ered ex­pos­ing chil­dren as well as adults to dan­ger.

The res­i­dents said the mes­sage the agen­cies are send­ing to them is that law­less­ness will ben­e­fit you.

MP: No promis­es were made, the youths need to up­grade their skills

Roger Munroe, MP for To­co/San­gre Grande de­nied the claims made by the youths of Tu­rure. He em­pha­sised that he nev­er made any promis­es or had any con­ver­sa­tion with the youths about em­ploy­ment. How­ev­er, he said he was able to as­sist those who had ap­proached him with their prob­lems.

The MP ad­vised the youths to up­grade their skills if they are seek­ing em­ploy­ment at Na­tion­al Quar­ries since there is no va­can­cy for labour­ers at present.

Con­cern­ing the heavy dust and de­plorable road, Munroe said this has been ex­ist­ing for many years due to the heavy trucks and equip­ment tra­vers­ing the road dai­ly.

Calls to Na­tion­al Quar­ries went unan­swered.

Coun­cil­lor: I will send cor­re­spon­dence to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to get help

The new­ly ap­point­ed coun­cil­lor for the area Nas­sar Ho­sein vis­it­ed Tu­rure and lis­tened to the con­cerns of the youths.

He said he would be send­ing cor­re­spon­dences to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to have some if not all of the is­sues re­solved.

Con­cern­ing em­ploy­ment at the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, he said there was a prob­lem with fi­nance, but he promised to make some rec­om­men­da­tion on be­half of the un­em­ployed youths

WASA promis­es to look in­to the mat­ter

Mean­while, Daniel Plen­ty, man­ag­er of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at WASA said no re­ports of leaks came to him. He promised to look in­to the mat­ter.

Dad needs a wheel­chair for son

John Vin­cent, a fa­ther of four, is ap­peal­ing for help. Vin­cent said he was un­em­ployed and his wife gets So­cial Wel­fare as­sis­tance which they are bare­ly able to sur­vive on. They are in dire need of a wheel­chair for their phys­i­cal­ly hand­i­capped child. Any­one will­ing to help can call 272-9525 or 389-1429.