St Augustine South marks new period of peace at children’s treat

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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“See good. Do good. Be good, and good will al­ways fol­low you.”

Urg­ing adults and chil­dren of St Au­gus­tine South to adopt this as their mantra for the new year, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day re­flect­ed on the pos­i­tive strides made with­in the com­mu­ni­ty over the past three years.

She was speak­ing while join­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) at their third an­nu­al Chil­dren’s Christ­mas Treat at the St Au­gus­tine South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Ameen re­called how frac­tured and fear­ful res­i­dents had been in the af­ter­math of a spate of mur­ders three years ago. The qui­et, unas­sum­ing area, known as the Train Line, was thrust in­to the na­tion­al spot­light in 2023, af­ter a se­ries of killings claimed the lives of sev­en peo­ple and forced sev­er­al oth­ers to flee with lit­tle more than the clothes they were wear­ing.

Ameen told res­i­dents she too had been scep­ti­cal about ac­cept­ing the in­vi­ta­tion to part­ner with the po­lice to make the com­mu­ni­ty safer, as there were cor­rupt of­fi­cers who had been work­ing with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Three years lat­er, the ever-grate­ful MP said, “You did not give up on my con­stituents.”

She en­cour­aged res­i­dents to con­tin­ue speak­ing with the po­lice and pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion on il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, as she said this col­lab­o­ra­tion led to the peace they are now en­joy­ing.

Cit­ing the suc­cess of the Hand in Hand Ini­tia­tive in the St Au­gus­tine com­mu­ni­ty, she ap­pealed to the po­lice to ex­tend it to ar­eas such as Monte Grande, Ma­coya Set­tle­ment and Orop­une Gar­dens.

Al­so laud­ing the suc­cess of the out­reach ef­fort, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, North East­ern Di­vi­sion, Rishi Singh, de­scribed the “in­ter­ven­tion” as re­ward­ing and ful­fill­ing. He said the ini­tia­tive had brought war­ring fac­tions with­in the area to­geth­er.

Demon­strat­ing the uni­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty, he asked sev­er­al res­i­dents to in­ter­lock hands be­fore at­tempt­ing to pull them apart, say­ing, “Once a so­ci­ety is tied to­geth­er, it would be dif­fi­cult for any­one to in­trude.”

Snr Supt Vern­ly Gift ac­knowl­edged the hard work and count­less hours his team in­vest­ed to trans­form the com­mu­ni­ty in­to a safe place.

He told of­fi­cers, “We need to spread our wings a lit­tle wider.”

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 chil­dren re­ceived presents yes­ter­day, while sev­er­al fam­i­lies were gift­ed ham­pers.

WPC Re­anne Nicholas-Di­az con­firmed the treat was the 12th phase of the Hand In Hand Ini­tia­tive in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Wip­ing away tears as she de­scribed the gen­er­ous out­pour­ing of sup­port by pri­vate spon­sors and cor­po­rate stake­hold­ers, she said, “We have had so much giv­en to us. Some per­sons did not even ask for doc­u­men­ta­tion; they just want­ed to help and be part of this, and for that, we are ex­treme­ly grate­ful.”

PRO of the ini­tia­tive, Ger­ard Coutain, spoke of the lack of so­cial and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty when they first en­tered the area, com­pared to now.

“Ini­tial­ly, even the mandir that was their re­li­gious house in that area, they had stopped at­tend­ing, even the church ... There were Pen­te­costal teach­ings that used to hap­pen on Sun­days; even that had ceased be­cause of the crime sit­u­a­tion there.”

He ex­plained how the po­lice had lis­tened to res­i­dents’ con­cerns and, by act­ing on this feed­back, how much they had ac­com­plished.

“We have seen the mandir open back. The Sun­day school is on its way to re­open­ing.”

He said res­i­dents from Ben­ny Road Ex­ten­sion and Dook­iesingh Trace Ex­ten­sion—places that had pre­vi­ous­ly been di­vid­ed by un­of­fi­cial gang bound­aries—were now hap­pi­ly sit­ting to­geth­er.