KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

A new “Wel­come to Mor­vant Laven­tille” sign has caught the at­ten­tion of cit­i­zens, not be­cause of its beau­ty—as in­tend­ed—but rather a mis­spelling print­ed on the sig­nage that went un­de­tect­ed. 

The new sign was un­veiled by the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EPoS) at the in­ter­sec­tion of La­dy Young Road and the East­ern Main Road at Mor­vant Junc­tion yes­ter­day. 

EPoS said it’s part of its Busi­ness Im­prove­ment Dis­trict (BID) project, which aims to en­hance the phys­i­cal im­age of east of Port-of-Spain.

How­ev­er, “Arneaud Av­enue” was in­cor­rect­ly spelt as “Arneaud Anenue” on the sign, leav­ing many raised eye­brows and ques­tions over who sanc­tioned the sign and how much it cost tax­pay­ers to con­struct it.

Op­po­si­tion MP Khadi­jah Ameen post­ed a pho­to of the sign’s un­veil­ing to so­cial me­dia, say­ing, “Imag­ine hav­ing a whole cer­e­mo­ny with every­one in tow to cut a rib­bon for a sign and you spell Av­enue as Anenue. What’s the cost again? #VoteTh­e­mOut”

The sign was al­so met with some un­wel­comed scep­ti­cism, as res­i­dents be­lieve their re­al is­sues are not be­ing ad­dressed. While some res­i­dents saw the sign as an item to beau­ti­fy the area, they told Guardian Me­dia it does noth­ing to al­le­vi­ate se­ri­ous is­sues af­fect­ing their com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing crime, un­em­ploy­ment, garbage and drainage prob­lems. 

A Guardian Me­dia video on­line of the un­veil­ing al­so gar­nered a lot of neg­a­tive at­ten­tion, with many peo­ple leav­ing com­ments sug­gest­ing that the Gov­ern­ment use the mon­ey to in­vest in pro­grammes for res­i­dents and in­fra­struc­ture for the area in­stead. Guardian Me­dia al­so sought the cost of the wel­come sign, but up to press time did not re­ceive feed­back from EPoS.

At the site yes­ter­day, Mor­vant res­i­dent Nicole Smart said for years she’s tried con­tact­ing both in­cum­bent Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce and the coun­cil­lor for the area, about en­sur­ing peo­ple do not dump garbage in front of her home, which is lo­cat­ed on La­dy Young Road, as it leads to clog­ging the drains, but to no avail.

She claimed the garbage truck on­ly comes to take away the garbage when peo­ple burn the items.

How­ev­er, she said the Fire Ser­vice al­so has to be called in fre­quent­ly to out the fires, which are al­so prov­ing to be a se­ri­ous health and safe­ty haz­ard. She said she al­so fears the over­heard wires could catch afire and it could spread to her house.

As far as the erec­tion of the new sign is con­cerned, Smart said, “When I looked at the sign, I find it is a lit­tle bit too small. You have to slow down in or­der to see where you go­ing to and how far you go­ing, but it has a lot of is­sues with­in the com­mu­ni­ty that I think they need to ad­dress and they’re not ad­dress­ing at all... I’m hop­ing if I put up a sign here it helps. I don’t think it will help but I’m just hop­ing.”

An­oth­er Mor­vant res­i­dent, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said, “You put a sign to say wel­come, wel­come means you are wel­come to come in but who re­al­ly wants to come in here? If you stay too long you could get shot. And they ain’t do­ing any­thing for we.”

An­oth­er Mor­vant res­i­dent said, “There are no train­ing pro­grammes for the youths. You on­ly want the youths’ vote, but af­ter elec­tions you aban­don them, you ne­glect them, so what you ex­pect to hap­pen?

“Where are the jobs? You not fix­ing the drains. One set of hogs on­ly com­ing in the area be­cause of all the garbage. You want to put a sign there. Maybe that’s good for trav­ellers or tourists to know where they go­ing, but what about the com­mu­ni­ties, what’s there to help them?”

Res­i­dents even ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to be care­ful when vis­it­ing the area, not­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing shot by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment as well.

With Leonce on his way out, hav­ing an­nounced his de­par­ture from pol­i­tics due to a per­son­al is­sue, some of the res­i­dents said they are not even con­fi­dent a new MP will do any bet­ter.

Last week, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment se­lect­ed Co­conut Dri­ve res­i­dent and en­gi­neer Chris­t­ian Birch­wood to re­place Leonce.

The UNC is yet to an­nounce a can­di­date for this con­stituen­cy.

How­ev­er, PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der re­cent­ly told Guardian Me­dia his par­ty plans to con­test the con­stituen­cy.

On the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the con­stituen­cy, Smart added, “I re­al­ly can’t tell you about the rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­cause to me no mat­ter who in pow­er and who in the area, I don’t see things be­ing done around here.”