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Around Trinidad and Tobago
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Blanchisseuse must not be forgotten - Pt 6
Road view of the ocean
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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: March 01, 2005
Posted: March 07, 2005
We are concerned about the education in Primary School in Brasso Seco. They promised in a meeting on the 4th February, that they were going to build the school and now they are just turning around. We protested and had the school closed for a week. I am now discussing it with Mr. Barb and he said, "all right Mr. Charles, next week (week of the 07-03-05) I am making sure I get the two persons to come and meet with you to discuss the matter." I said I want two days notice because I live in Blanchisseuse and I have to make arrangements in Brasso Seco and they have no telephone there. Again we talk about the bus service. We see they buy some buses for round the town service in Port of Spain. What we are asking, is why they have to buy round the town service when anybody could get a taxi, while we, the people in the country districts in general, should be suffering. The ministers say they are going to buy twenty plus buses by mid-year. So we are hoping to see if they will keep it up. I got a letter from the Minister of Works last month and he said he decided to work with the council.
We have no dental service. We had a dental service for about four years. They had a smaller Health Center which was an extra building before they broke it down and built another Health Center. And since then we have no dental service. I had written to the Minister of Health since January '05. Since then I got no reply. I will write him again and register the letter because when yah from the country they doh business with yuh too much, but if yuh from rural areas, well! It is important that we have a dental service.
We had the revenue office just before the police station. It is the old building on the side and it has been closed now for about three years. We have been calling about it for about three years now. We identified a nice little empty building around the corner for them and I took it up again.
The only rain forest we have in Trinidad and Tobago is the North Coast. It is the Prettiest Paria Bay virgin soil and we believe that when you open ah road, yuh going to spoil it. We are getting lessons everyday when you watch the destruction of the forest and the hardship within the community and the rich country. They throw down all the forest in Brazil and the Amazon. We know what has been going. All the big boys have already gone up there and speculate and purchase all the land. If you go at Stauble's estate which is a big estate and all the beaches right through the coast, you see the massive walls they are building coming in the North Coast, and we expect the same thing. When the ordinary man comes to go on the beach, where yuh going to pass, you have no access to the beach, and we fear that. When the turtles come to lay and they say see the limes they doh come. In La Fillet where big construction is going on, when you see dah rainfall, all de landslide come and go down in the sea. The fishermen use live bait, but with the dirty water the fish cyar stop there because of the muddy water, so all the live bait gone. We foresee the same thing happening all along the North Coast. When people come here they like to walk, or sometimes they like to hire ah boat to go and do their business and they walk back. You have track from here to Matelot, they call it the Paria main road starting from Sangre Grande police station come down pass to Toco.
In the past, Sir Hubert Rance Warner and Victor Brian, they passed through the whole road from Matelot on horse. Long ago in Blanchisseuse the station was the mounted Branch before they moved the Mounted Branch, they had horses there. And once ah month the police here would leave and go to Matelot and the police from Matelot would leave and come here. If all the foreigners come and they travel around and hike, they like that and that is the way it should be, because that is what yuh coming to see, nature. If you take from Maracas Bay coming to La Fillet, yuh would never see ah tourist or anybody watching birds. But if you go to Arima Road now, that is what they are doing all the time. People go to Asa Wright all the time, right through the year they have people. They wouldn't go La Fillet, they won't see anything. On the Arima road you see the beauty of the trees, the birds, is that they want to see, you see ah lil snake now an' then passing across the road. Is that they come to see. They don't want to come an' see ah small concrete jungle to theirs, nature is what they want to see. We want proper maintenance and support services. We do not want that road, that road is for the money people. You see an example of that with the massive walls coming in on the North Coast, no access to the beach because all ah dem have the whole beach. Their intention was to block the ordinary people out. They come in the areas and they know the place more than you because they come and check out the land, do a search on it to see if the previous residents still occupy it or paying the taxes. Because once the period to pay has passed you lose the land sometimes the people not even aware of it, and then they go and claim the land and start building on it with the intention of shutting the ordinary people out. We want this to stop and get more people who are interested in Eco Tourism.
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View Blanchisseuse Photo Album at:
www.trinisoca.com/gallery/blanchisseuse
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