Derek Achong

Un­em­ploy­ment among young peo­ple has been high­light­ed as the ma­jor is­sue af­fect­ing the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro con­stituen­cy. 

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Fos­ter Cum­mings and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Jear­lean John both touched on the is­sue while ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers af­ter fil­ing their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion at the La Hor­quet­ta Re­gion­al Com­plex yes­ter­day. 

“Well, I imag­ine it is an is­land­wide thing, every­one wants jobs. We are go­ing to of­fer holis­tic de­vel­op­ment for all the peo­ple in La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro,” Cum­mings said. 

“We have an ac­tion plan and as soon as I am elect­ed and the gov­ern­ment takes of­fice be­cause the PNM will win the elec­tion, we are go­ing to do every­thing it takes to de­vel­op this con­stituen­cy.”

Cum­mings added that coun­selling, ca­reer de­vel­op­ment and skills train­ing would be utilised dur­ing the process. 

John sug­gest­ed that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to ad­dress the is­sue dur­ing their last term and in pre­vi­ous ones may have con­tributed to crime in ar­eas of the con­stituen­cy. 

“This is about pro­vid­ing jobs, train­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. You have three gen­er­a­tions liv­ing in a house that is 800 square feet or 1,000 square feet. That does not say any­thing for the so­cial well­be­ing of a per­son, that is why we have many young guys and girls find­ing them­selves at the side of the road,” John said. 

She claimed that she would at­tempt to ad­dress this is­sue, as well as long-stand­ing in­fra­struc­ture is­sues in seg­ments of the con­stituen­cy, once she is elect­ed. 

Both Cum­mings and John were al­so con­fi­dent of se­cur­ing the seat for their par­ties. 

“This is a PNM seat. Con­trary to the view ex­pressed by some that it is mar­gin­al, we won this seat on the last oc­ca­sion by al­most 3,000 votes and it is my in­ten­tion to en­sure that the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro seat is re­tained by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment,” Cum­mings said. 

John mean­while said: “I feel very good and elat­ed that they (the sup­port­ers) know we are go­ing to win this seat. They are not guess­ing. We have done the work.”

The fil­ings at the of­fice were rel­a­tive­ly in­ci­dent-free, with Cum­mings and his en­tourage ar­riv­ing first around 10 am and John’s ar­riv­ing short­ly af­ter Cum­mings’ team had left to con­tin­ue their tour of the area. 

Both par­ties utilised mu­sic trucks and tas­sa drum­mers but Cum­mings’ team al­so in­clud­ed the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion and a parang band. Both can­di­dates were ac­com­pa­nied by some of their po­lit­i­cal col­leagues who are not con­test­ing this elec­tion. Cum­mings was flanked by out­go­ing Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, while out­go­ing Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al was spot­ted amongst John’s sup­port­ers. Cum­mings ar­rived on foot while John ar­rived in an SUV dri­ven by for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen. 

While most sup­port­ers wore masks and at­tempt­ed to prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the lat­ter was al­most im­pos­si­ble due to the lo­gis­tics in the area and the quan­tum of sup­port­ers present.