Creating job opportunities and allocating funds to the Praedial Larceny Squad, and also to agriculture, are some of the improvements proposed by residents from La Brea during a pre-budget consultation in their community on Thursday.
The residents shared their thoughts with their Member of Parliament, Clyde Elder.
“We want to see money allocated to agriculture access roads. You go through this community, it’s a lot of agriculture in this area, and we are not seeing agriculture access roads where farmers can bring their produce out because without the roads, they have a lot of goods that they can’t bring out, especially when rain falls.”
To tackle the poverty in the area, which may be encouraging crime, a resident proposed the implementation of initiatives that will create job opportunities.
“My concern is persons don’t see the direct connection between poverty and crime. Now, it is not an excuse, poverty is not an excuse for crime. We have to recognise that desperate people do desperate things. Once we look to implement initiatives and bring opportunities to the masses, we would build a sense of pride that you are working to maintain your whole community, but you’re doing things that you love, with the skill that you have.”
The adoption of a cultural policy to encourage the nurturing of the arts in youth, for their development, was another proposal.
“Under this cultural policy, you have one: expansion of tutorship, which is currently seasonal under the Best Village Programme. Expansion of tuition means that you will have all genres of arts will be tutored, in that way you will have generational employment. Benefits: expansion of tutorship will involve exportation of all genres of the culture.”
The aim of the pre-budget consultations is to allow input from citizens as they brainstorm local ideas and share thoughts on what they believe should be set aside for their region in the national budget.