East Port of Spain on hold
The transformation of East Port of Spain from an ugly duckling to a glittering inner city has not materialized. The Government has run out of money and those who protested against the ambitious plans can now exhale.
The East Port of Spain Development Company recently embarked on a public relations campaign to show that it was on the job publishing pictures of areas that were bulldozed and so on.
However, it appears the ambitious billion dollar project has become a casualty of Government cutbacks in spending.
The re-development plans announced three years ago had been met with much resistance. Many saw the plans as just another attempt to perpetuate the dependency syndrome among the poorer residents of the community by, as one resident puts it, “providing more goodies for poor people to fight over.”
Those against the plans now see the overgrown lots to the East of City Gate as another unfulfilled promise from politicians.
Several other “re-development” projects ended in failure over the last 40 years. The most memorable were the “Tanks” and Riverside Plaza, both in the vicinity of Picton Road.
The “Tanks” are two huge, ugly, out-of-service cisterns, which were “beautified” under the UNC regime. The area surrounding the tanks was declared a “tourist attraction” and park, but few questioned why anyone would want to go to a park surrounded by squatters’ shacks, mud paths, and a high level of criminal activity. Even then, strangers visiting the area were singled out and questioned or chased away by drug pushers and small-time “gangsters.” Crime in the area was well on its way to what it is today.
The other project, Riverside Plaza, was supposed to be the centrepiece of an ambitious redevelopment project in the 1970s. An office building, shopping facilities, and a multi-storey car park were completed, and slum clearance led to the construction of several blocks of apartments.
Today, workers at the Government offices in the glass-faced tower hurry to and from work to avoid contact with idlers on the corners of the country’s roughest neighborhood, the shopping centre is an empty, abandoned shell, and half of the car park has been converted to a centre for homeless persons.
They are convinced that most of the community’s problems could be traced to undelivered promises made by politicians, state-sponsored programmes and policies gone wrong, or attempts by politicians to keep the community dependent on political patronage.
Many of those murdered in the last five years were employed by the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP), which has become notorious for high levels of corruption. While many of the murders have been branded by Police as drug related, it is no secret that not a few are the result of feuds over state-funded development projects.
In the recent past, the refurbishing of run-down apartment buildings by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) led to several killings as residents fought bloody battles over who should and should not be employed in the programme.
The promise of temporary employment in the URP has been used as an inducement by the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) for decades. The temporary nature of the employment (a maximum of 10 days) ensured decades of loyalty to the PNM as it was the only guarantee of an income for many poor households.
When other political parties held the reins of power, they did not undo what they criticised the PNM for in their election campaigns, and tried to buy support in Laventille and other poor communities through the same means.
For both the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) and the United National Congress (UNC), the attempts to perpetuate the PNM’s model of dependency and control ended disastrously for the parties and the country: both parties were denied second terms, and the URP has morphed into a monster that not even the PNM can control.
Other Laventille residents feel redevelopment should be welcomed as it was decades ago when, under former Prime Minister the late Eric Williams, the area known as “Shanty-Town” was replaced by Beetham Gardens.
One well-known community activist in support of the plan had this to say: “Remember how John John people felt left out when Eric Williams moved Shanty Town people into new homes into what is now known as the Beetham Estate? “They should let the government carry out their plans, because whatever you want to say about Beetham, it is better than the cardboard and garlic box houses that made up Shanty Town,” he said.
Some Laventille and East Port of Spain residents support redevelopment of all neighbourhoods between the downtown area and Morvant Junction, as they believe it is the only way to break up the criminal gangs that control the areas’ streets.
These residents, few in number, are willing to cooperate with plans to relocate to new housing projects.
They are convinced that the blood bath will continue unabated unless drastic action is taken by Government, and see the breakup of the community, as one East Port of Spain resident puts it, “a small price to pay” to bring crime down and return the entire country to a peaceful state.
But inactivity at the cleared sites, a deafening silence on the issue from the East Port of Spain Development Company, and rumours of serious budget cuts have now brought these once optimistic residents of Laventille and environs to a common position with their fellow residents who are against re-development: They now see themselves as victims of yet another unkept promise.