Advice I got from Samaroo

THE EDITOR: Shortly after winning the Nariva constituency parliamentary seat in the 1995 general election, I contacted Prof Brinsley Samaroo, asking to see him on matters relating to the constituency he had represented in Parliament from 1986 to 91.

Dr Samaroo had won the seat in 1986 for the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR). The People’s National Movement's (PNM)'s Hardeo Hardath had held the seat for 15 years. In 1991 Kris Jurai took the seat from Samaroo and in 1995 I took it from Jurai.

Since 1995, the seat has remained with the United National Congress (UNC) with Collin Partap (2010-2015), Christine Newallo-Hosein (2015-2020) and Dr Rai Ragbir (2020-present). In 2007, Nariva was realigned and renamed Cumuto/Manzanilla.

During my 1995 campaign, constituents had so much praise for Samaroo’s representation that I felt compelled to seek him out to benefit from his experiences as parliamentary representative. As always, Samaroo was gracious and accommodating.

He advised me on the good, bad and the indifferent relating to political representation in a rural constituency. He handed me a list of projects and programmes he had intended to initiate in the constituency but had run out of time.

These included roads, landslips and bridges to repair; water, electricity and telephone services to reach constituents; and infrastructure to assist the many farming communities in Nariva. He urged me to do all I could as a member of Cabinet to bring Nariva “out of the backwaters into the urban light.”

Samaroo had a passion for agriculture and was concerned that farmers were not organised to benefit from market forces. He urged Nariva cocoa and coffee farmers to form a farmers' group to take advantage of assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture. He spent a considerable amount of time hoping to convince rice farmers to protect the Nariva Swamp.

Lack of resources was a major cause for the apparent neglect of rural communities. It is hoped that the local government reform initiated by the PNM would address this problem.

The hilltop Grosvenor Presbyterian School in Sangre Grande was one of the primary schools rebuilt during Samaroo's tenure as Nariva MP.

As we wrapped up our conversation, he warned me not to underestimate people who live in rural communities. He said they may be poor and live under difficult conditions, but they were smart. He said sometimes they make you feel you can fool them.

He shared with me an incident during one of his community walkabouts. Coming from a teaching background he usually walked with a short eraser-tip pencil and a stack of pocket-size notepaper.

While visiting a family, they began enumerating the problems they faced. He said he took out the pencil and notepaper and was about to write when he was crudely stopped by a senior member of the family. The family member told him, “No, no, all you too smart, you writing with pencil. When you reach home you go rub it off and forget about we!”

HARRY PARTAP

former MP