Frustrated Williamsville residents want ECCE centre opened

Feeling frustrated and neglected, residents of Ben Lomond Village in Williamsville protested on Wednesday to demand that the Ministry of Education salvages the community’s abandoned and dilapidated early childhood care and education (ECCE) centre.

The protest, which was led by Naparima MP Rodney Charles and was a part of the United National Congress’s (UNC) 'People’s Revolution,' started at 8.30 am in front of the abandoned Ben Lomond ECCE centre on Harris Promenade Street, Williamsville.

Speaking during the protest, Charles claimed that the centre was fully built when the People’s National Movement (PNM) won the 2015 election but it was never opened.

Charles said “All this centre needed was furniture and teachers. The building was 100 per cent completed.

“When you go inside you see there are fans, place to put the children’s food and there are toilet facilities.

“All the government had to do was have the testicular fortitude, and the courage, to pay the contractor and the people of this community would have been better off.”

The abandoned centre was overrun with vines, dozens of jack spaniard nests lined its roof and the glass on one of its main entrance doors was smashed.

Inside, Newsday found a makeshift bed made of old cushions inside.

On the building’s condition, Charles said, “There was a famous writer who said that third-world cities and institutions are losing the battle with the bush.

“In other words, the bush is claiming the cities. Well the bush is claiming this education institute.”

Charles is now challenging Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly to prove her commitment to education by opening the centre.

“The minister (of education) will give you all kinds of platitudes and ole talk but her job – under the Education Act – is to supervise and ensure quality education for all.

“If the government is serious at all about reducing poverty in rural areas, this (centre) is and must be a priority.”

Behind the abandoned ECCE centre is a community centre which Charles said has suffered the same fate.

Charles claims that the community centre was over 70 per cent complete when the PNM won the 2015 election.

Charles lamented, “All it required was the (PNM) government to give a financial injection to complete it.

“It was intended to be a work centre where people after work could go and learn a trade…that is nowhere close which speaks to the quality of the government’s interest and vision.”

Apart from the two abandoned centres in Ben Lomond, Charles said there was another abandoned ECCE centre in Reform Village, Gasparillo.

Resident Rennie Debysingh thinks the government has wasted taxpayers money by abandoning the ECCE and community centres.

If opened, Debysingh said the ECCE centre had the potential to be a space in which young mind’s in the community could have been holistically developed.

He explained, “This would have been the stepping stone to higher education and I want to be believe that is has slowed down, over the years, the progress of the nation by slowing the progress of kids in this area.

“I was around in the good ole days when Dr Eric Williams would have pronounced that the future of the nation was in the schoolbags of the children.

“It appears that that thought has evaded the minds of today’s politicians.”

Contacted for comment, Gadsby-Dolly told Newsday that the Ben Lomond ECCE centre has not yet been handed over to the Education Ministry because the Education Facilities Company Ltd owes an outstanding sum to the consultant that built the centre.

Gadsby-Dolly said the centre has been listed as part of phase three of the ministry’s plan to complete construction projects on schools across TT.

She explained, “The incomplete schools (across TT) have been batched into phases for completion.

“Phase 1 is almost complete at a cost of approximately $400 million and funding is being sought through the Ministry of Finance for Phase 2. The school (Ben Lomond ECCE) is listed as part of Phase 3.”