Al Rawi: Better days coming for Sando

Attorney General and MP for San Fernando West, Faris Al-Rawi handed out keys to residents in his constituency while officially lighting up Independence Square for the Christmas season on Tuesday.

At the ceremony, Al-Rawi announced that government was making history as the first two unexplained preliminary wealth orders were being executed.

“People are now before the courts of TT who have to explain where their wealth came from. That has is no small thing as it has the ability to change our society.”

Speaking on light and homes for San Fernandians, he said, “We have, for many many years, not paid attention to our communities.

“In San Fernando, we have a very unique structure and we have a mixed population with some extremely wealthy and some extremely poor. We have landowners and owners of nothing more than what is on the land. People who don't have the dignity of owning where they live.”

Al-Rawi recalled that in 2016 there was a fire that claimed two houses on the Marabella train line and he could not get immediate help because victims did not own the land.

“I went back to Parliament with a plan to construct a home for just over $100,000 using volunteer labour and donations to provide for the needy.”

Back then, the Prime Minister jumped at the idea and parliamentarians took the plan into Moruga to assist the people there.

"It is indecent when we cannot say to our children, let me give you the property that our family built," Al-Rawi said.

San Fernando West is benefiting from this housing programme which is ably assisted by the chairman of the Land and Settlement Agency (LSA) Ozzy Francis and CEO of LSA Hazar Hosein.

Al-Rawi also complimented Housing Minister Edmund Dillon for assisting in the home development. He told homeowners that the next step was to ask Cabinet to consider the land under the homes, not only in San Fernando but throughout the rest of TT.

Al-Rawi told his constituents there would be many who would tell them not to pay attention to Skinner Park or the secondary grounds being developed or the car park being built near the hospital and the fishing pond that is to be built in Icacos Bay. He also spoke of the urban development to be built in the Public Transport Service Corporation’s bus yard or the community centre at St Vincent Street and the Magistrates court to be built at Irving Park.

“No one has approached the redevelopment of our city in this organised way and that is what I ask you to have patience for. All of these things require development and structure. I can promise you the year ahead of us will be a prosperous one.

"Thanks to corporate citizens we were able to put up a sustainable form of rope lighting that will stay on a permanent basis.".

Al-Rawi said the best days for San Fernando are ahead and thanked Junia Regrello for being a caring son of the soil.