Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Coun­cil­lor for War­renville/Kel­ly Vil­lage Samuel Sankar was the lone Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lor to show up at the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, he said this is be­cause he was un­aware that UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called on coun­cil­lors to boy­cott the meet­ing.

Sankar’s move on Tues­day seemed in de­fi­ance of the par­ty lead­er­ship. How­ev­er, even af­ter re­al­is­ing he was in de­fi­ance of the UNC leader, Sankar re­mained at the ses­sion.

But he told Guardian Me­dia that he nev­er got the re­vised memo on a boy­cott.

“I heard of the par­ty’s po­si­tion late morn­ing. No­body called me to tell me any­thing and no par­ty of­fi­cial called me about it be­fore. It was on­ly when I reached the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus in Port-of-Spain for the con­sul­ta­tion that I heard about it and the PNM coun­cil­lors told me that I had the bel­ly to be at the event de­fy­ing par­ty in­struc­tions,” Sankar, who is on the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion ex­ec­u­tive, said.

How­ev­er, he said hav­ing al­ready reg­is­tered to be part of the event, he re­vert­ed to his orig­i­nal plan, which was con­firmed as of 7 pm on Mon­day night, which was for all UNC coun­cil­lors to at­tend and to protest and raise con­cerns faced in each con­stituen­cy.

Sankar said he used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi re­gard­ing the many chal­lenges his burgess­es are cur­rent­ly fac­ing, in­clud­ing over­grown parks, lack of in­fra­struc­ture and chal­lenges ac­cess­ing fund­ing.

“I told them that there is a dis­con­nect be­tween agen­cies and ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly when my parks, lights for recre­ation­al grounds and all oth­er ameni­ties are in a state of re­pair. I used the plat­form to raise the con­cerns fac­ing the over 12,000 I rep­re­sent in my burgess,” Sankar said.

He added, “As of this time, no one from the UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive or col­leagues has not spo­ken to me.”

In call­ing for a boy­cott dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I will be very dis­ap­point­ed to see you sit­ting there like lit­tle fowls in a yard. Yes, sit down there like, ‘Oh, wow, amaz­ing, the PM is speak­ing with me.’”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to at­tend the meet­ing but did not due to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s boy­cott call.