Commentary: Terror in Valsayn

‘The residents are being robbed and attacked on a regular basis and are even attacked in broad daylight’

VALSAYN residents are being terrorized by criminals and bandits with many residents facing home invasions.

The residents of Valsayn are fed up with their current Member of Parliament and have decided to take matters into their own hands and submit a petition and various letters to the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation begging for permission to lockdown their neighbourhood and put in a guarded barrier system.

The residents are so fed up with the crime situation facing their community, the Valsayn North Park Association has written the corporation appealing for permission to install barriers, to monitor entries and exits and have proposed to hire a private security firm to assist with tracking vehicles and pedestrians through the access points and to conduct private patrols.

Valsayn North and Valsayn South communities have seen an increase in crime and the communities and have been targeted by criminals continuously in recent years and they can not take this anymore.

The residents are being robbed and attacked on a regular basis and are even attacked in broad daylight.

Home invasions are a serious problem and the Residents want action by the authorities. They have given up on the two Members of Parliament that live in the area. They have approached the Member of Parliament for St Joseph for the last two years and gotten no action from the MP for St Joseph Terrence Deyalsingh and although the residents have made several complaints, they claim he is not doing anything about the situation.

The minister who lives in North Valsayn has turned a deaf ear to all his concerned constituents.

Mr Deyalsingh is in his second term as Minister of Health and a member of the Cabinet as the MP for St Joseph within the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, he is serving his eighth year as a Member of Parliament and a Cabinet Minister.

He puts up a good front and appeals to the public to do the right thing but when it comes to listening to his constituents and providing tangible assistance, he falls very short in this aspect. When it comes to his own constituency, he doesn’t seem to give a care about their problems or what the elderly residents have to face with this upsurge in home invasions within the very area he lives. The problems of his constituents apparently do not matter to him.

The residents are at their wits’ end and they do not know where to turn. They are hoping the regional corporation grants them approval to implement barriers at the entries and exits in Valsayn North so that they can have some type of protection against the influx of criminals in this area. What good is there having an ineffective MP who doesn’t care about his constituents and cannot even take heed of the cries of his own concerned constituents in his constituency, he’s obviously putting up a show for the publicity and is a hypocrite to his constituents.

So again we ask that the powers that be to hear the cries of these residential communities and put things in place for effective policing patrols to deal with the upsurge in crime within these law-abiding communities. Plain talk, bad manners.

We call on the prime minister to do the country a favour and deal with the crime crisis in Trinidad and Tobago. One of the Government’s basic functions is to protect its citizens against crime!

They are failing us miserably on this front.

Dr Neil Gosine is an insurance executive and president of the Valsayn North Park Association. He is also the treasurer of the UNC and a former chairman of the National Petroleum Marketing Company of Trinidad and Tobago. He holds a Doctorate in Business Administration, a Master’s in Business Administration MBA, BSC in Mathematics and a BA in Administrative Studies. The views and comments expressed in this column are not necessarily those of AZP News, a Division of Complete Image Limited.