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CCNTV6
  • 11 months ago
A community is divided and some Sea Lots West residents claim, the war is due to political affiliations and benefits.


Desperate for peace, residents invited the police for a meeting, but not even the presence of police deterred one faction from orchestrating an attack on Thursday. Rynessa Cutting reports.
Transcript
00:00A community is divided and some Sealot's West residents claim the war is due to political
00:05affiliations and benefits. Desperate for peace, residents invited the police for a meeting,
00:11but not even the presence of police deterred one faction from orchestrating an attack earlier today.
00:17Vanessa Cutting reports. Now, even as police were meeting with Sealot's West residents,
00:23an attack was being perpetrated right here mere meters away along the Beetham Highway.
00:29This has was ensued among three factions of what was once one community.
00:49It was shortly after midday when chaos erupted on Pioneer Drive in Sealot's
00:54after a Sealot's West resident was attacked. As residents were gathered at the community
00:59center with police, the residents had invited the police for a meeting in the hope of bringing
01:05an end to a war between Sealot's East, West and the Beetham Highway Sealots,
01:10which has seen at least 12 people attacked over the course of this week.
01:25When it going to happen?
01:28So this is gang related? No, not to say gang related, but you see the, the, the um,
01:37how to say, the younger ones, like, like myself and the others, we might have a little beef.
01:46Some of them mightn't be in the beef, but when they see them out there, they come around them
01:52hitting them big stones, slapping them up. Don't let ageable woman get slapped up.
01:57Another victim is nursing broken bones.
02:00I have plenty pain in my shoulder, fracture, dislocated jaw,
02:03but I still need to breastfeed my son.
02:07And this is as a result of the same problem?
02:09Yeah, but I just want to help everybody and anybody, so I didn't expect that to happen to me.
02:14After everybody, I just go out there. So I wasn't expecting that to happen to me after everybody.
02:20However, some residents told the police that the war is rooted in political affiliations and
02:26benefits.
02:27Silat is now separated into three segments, Silat West, Silat East, and Bitum Highway Silat.
02:35And these three, three communities are now at war.
02:40Some of the residents are claiming that the war is politically based, where some,
02:45some sections are getting contracts and other sections are not getting contracts.
02:48And that is really fueling the war, where you're seeing development in some areas and
02:52no development in others.
02:54Yeah, so our approach would be to reach out to the various community leaders,
03:01because while we might want to say we want to meet everybody at the same time,
03:05we recognize how volatile that can be.
03:07So the wise approach is to meet with the various factions under their respective heads,
03:13chart the way forward, and eventually we'd want to have one meeting with everybody at
03:17a round table.
03:19And we're able to bring some level of normalcy back to that community.
03:24In the interim, what the police have done is that we've established around the clock
03:30police presence within the Silat area.
03:33Because it's not just the young police involved, they're also attacking the elders,
03:36they're also attacking senior citizens, and we cannot just leave that to continue.
03:41So until we meet with all the factions, the police have established a heavy presence
03:45within the Silat community.
03:47Will you all be setting up a post also?
03:50No, no, no, no.
03:50We simply don't have the resources to set up a police post, but we'll have the statics.
03:57So at Pioneer Drive, at Production Avenue, further down near to the Lighthouse,
04:01we'll have officers on standby and officers moving as well,
04:05so that we're able to maintain that presence and we can respond accordingly in case of any
04:10eventuality.
04:11The women of Silat West have banded together calling for peace
04:15and they're urging their counterparts in the other factions to do the same.
04:20We don't want war, we're not about it.
04:24It's too much funeral we attend to, too much graves we dig and too much tears
04:29we have spread on our children.
04:32Now the ones that's here, what we gonna do?
04:35Let them end up the same way?
04:36No, we're the ones who's going to take the blame.
04:40So why we can't take front now and protect where we live?
04:42Because this is where we live.
04:45This is where we home is and this is where the children is.
04:49So if we can't fight for anything else, why can't we fight for our home?
04:52Because we're losing it amongst ourselves.
04:56We wake up.
04:57Too long we have been sleeping.
04:59Now we're up and we're fighting and we're not giving up.
05:03Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
05:06MP for Port of Spain South, Keith Scotland, is tonight denouncing acts of violence perpetrated
05:12by Silat's residents.
05:14Against other residents of the area.
05:16MP Scotland is also dismissing claims by some residents that the conflict is due to the
05:22distribution of government contracts.
05:24Scotland tells TV6 he has spoken with several members of the community and he's optimistic
05:29that good sense will prevail.
05:31He calls the current conflict counterproductive and counterintuitive as he says there is no
05:37Silat's one, two or three, only one community.
05:41Residents of which will all benefit from any development of the area.
05:45Scotland tells TV6 a number of projects are in the pipeline including the commissioning
05:49of a new fishing facility.
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