ROWLEY BLASTS LAVENTILLE PEOPLE

Dr Keith Rowley was brutally frank in Laventille yesterday as he delivered the feature address at the sod-turning ceremony for the Beverly Hills project.

In a tough talking speech, the planning and development minister fired verbal shot after shot at the people of Laventille, warning them that the crime and killing had to stop now. He said Government was fed up of gun crimes in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly in Laventille. Rowley warned that Government was moving to target the handlers of illegal guns. “And we are going to be rough and tough,” he stated, to loud applause from his Laventille audience. He noted that “one bullet” (a murder) could cost the state as much as $7 to $8 million in legal costs. “And that doesn’t include the split peas and rice you have to feed them in jail,” he said. “Ask yourself what that $8 million could do for you in Laventille, if only John did not kill Harry,” he added. Rowley  used the opportunity of the “good news” of building homes in an underprivileged community to verbally cane his political opponents, as well as school and lecture in almost censorial terms to the people of Laventille. Saying that the killing had to stop, Rowley said the Government only knows about the killing after it is done. “But some of you parents know about it before,” he chided. “True, true,” his listeners stated. “And worse than that, some of you encourage it,” he rebuked. “Yes, yes,” his audience stated. 

Earlier the PNM supporters revelled in Rowley’s thrashing of the PNM’s detractors. Little did they know that he had saved some of the fire for them, expressing his concerns and dissatisfaction with some of the practices of the people which have led to the crime onslaught in the area. Government could look after the externals — the building of homes, he said. “What happens inside your homes was your responsibility,” he stressed. “If you bring up young men and you let them believe somehow that all they have to do is lie down on yuh bed, eat yuh food, wake up any hour in the morning, look at the neighbour daughter, get her pregnant at age 14, 16, without being able to support that child. And not being able to discipline themselves to waking up rain or shine to have a bath, get dress and go to a work place and stay there...if you don’t tell yuh boy children that that is the life they should lead then they could take up the easier life and carry a gun.” But, of course, he added poignantly, that that only lasts until they meet the fastest gun. And he advised mothers to tell their “girl children” “not to even smile” at any man who has no interest in doing a day’s work for a day’s pay. The speech resonated with the audience who paced their applause after every point was made.

“It is only effort that allows you to take advantage of opportunity,” Rowley said.  He asked, in a tone of lament, what had happened to the skilled labour that the urban communities had almost specialised in producing — the plumbers, the carpenters, the jointers. Rowley made no apologies for government’s housing programme, described as “over-ambitious” by “its detractors.” In fact, he took pride in this. “Aim for the clouds and if yuh miss you would fall on the tree-tops,” he said, quoting the good old advice that his elders gave him when he went to high school. “Aim for the tree-tops and if you miss you will fall on the houses...Never aim for the ground.” He didn’t make any apologies either for spending the people’s money on the people’s needs. Saying that the housing programme would not only provide better living, but would lay the foundation for thousands of sustainable jobs, becoming an engine pulling the economy to growth, Rowley stressed: “[It was] Making the national cake wider... Our policy is not to take out slices (of the cake) and put it into our wives’ bank accounts abroad. Our policy is to spend the money here on programmes that create happiness,” he said. And for those who were accusing the government of house-padding, he had this to say: “What are we padding for in Beverly Hills, this morning? We have all the votes in Beverly Hills already.” Government was merely delivering on its promise to the people in Laventille, as it does to the people over all Trinidad and Tobago, he stated. Rowley was angry too that because some people deemed certain seats to be marginal, the view was that  government couldn’t or shouldn’t address the needs of the people there. “The only margin that we acknowledge is the margin of victory that will come to the PNM in any election in any time in  this country,” he boasted, to loud applause. IDB representative Mr Calder Hall listened intently to the minister’s address while his colleague Martin Joseph smiled broadly. And Rowley stressed that at the end of the day what was rewarded was the good work of the government. “Fortunately we do not reward graft, corruption, theft and lack of integrity,” he said.