Don’t create shanty towns

Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley has urged parents to instill respect and good manners into their children to prevent residential communities from being transformed into shanty-towns and “hell-holes.” Speaking at the handing-over ceremony of keys to some 250 new homeowners at Orchid Gardens in Pleasantville Tuesday, the outspoken minister also revealed that the coming months would see the construction of an additional 3,157 new housing units throughout all parts of the country, including an additional 800 units at Corinth, some 350 units at Golconda Village and a further 360 units at Wellington Road in Debe. “Our housing programme is a national programme, covering all parts of Trinidad and Tobago,” he said, predicting that the twin-island state’s chronic housing shortage may be solved well before 2020.

However, he observed that while the Housing Ministry was about the creation of communities, he said the upkeep of these communities was incumbent on the new homeowners and was dependent on “how you behave when you move in here. “Teach your children manners and respect and good behaviour so that your community will remain as pristine as you now see it,” he said. Also addressing the ceremony was San Fernando East MP and Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, who welcomed the new homeowners into what he termed “the best constituency in the whole country.” And while Orchid Gardens falls within the San Fernando East constituency, the Prime Minister jokingly said that with the proposed additions to the electoral landscape, “if you do what is right and what is good, the people will reciprocate in kind.”