Carnival, Chaguaramas and The Causeway

Marsha Walker

This year Carenage residents received a much welcomed break from the inconvenience of Carnival, and in case we doubted the lack of progress in handling activities down in Chaguaramas, one need only throw their mind back to the mess Burnaboy concert created.

The lack of progress in handling activities down in Chaguaramas

Despite the relief for residents, the lack of fetes on the Western Penninsula is sad actually, because it actually counters the plans for the development of the area.

Tormenting Woodbrook residents

This leads me to one stark difference between the UNC and the PNM: Kamla promised Chaguaramas a Causeway while Keith wants to give us Borough status with no Borough progress.  One believes in tangible solutions, the other depends on gimmicks like name changes with no real benefit.

Chaguaramas, leaving traffic aside for a moment, would be the obvious choice for Carnival as opposed to tormenting Woodbrook residents.  I read a newspaper article where residents stated that floor tiles and fish tanks were shaking as noise levels were simply just out of control this year. 

Kamla promised Chaguaramas a Causeway while Keith wants to give us Borough status with no Borough progress.

Contrast the population density of Woodbrook to Chaguaramas and you’d understand why I say the latter would provide a better suited Carnival destination.

In April 2015, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced that her cabinet had already agreed they will partner with the Canadian government to look into the feasibility of building a causeway from Port of Spain right down to Chaguaramas.

During her feature address she promised that with the help of the people, in her second term build the first-ever causeway in Trinidad and Tobago in the North-West peninsula.

The Prime Minister had recently returned from Panama and spoke about her experience – “I saw the causeway running across the water skipping all the major traffic and just getting from place to place with cut-off points along the way.”

Oh what a Causeway would have done for the constituency of Diego Martin West. 

What a Causeway would have done for the constituency of Diego Martin West

Doubles vendors outside the fetes.  Corn soup vendors.  A father hustling some mints and cigarettes along the way.  I am sure the industrious Carenage folk would have found many ways to earn an honest living from the increased traffic, not literally of course.