And Still I Rise

Trinidad Express
2005/08/19

Forget sex and watch television to control the number of children you have.

That was the personal advice Prime Minister Patrick Manning had for residents of Thompson Gardens, Tarouba, who last week protested for better living conditions.

Our view is that you should only have the number of children you could support,he told the residents, mainly relocated squatters, at a cottage meeting in the area on Monday night.

Manning shared with residents the fact that he was the father of two boys and they are costing me a fortune to upkeep.

He warned them not to have more children than they could afford to maintain.

Manning said that one way to practise effective birth control was to buy a television and instead of doing other things, keep looking at the programmes until you fall asleep.

Manning's comments were in obvious reference to the spiralling increase in births in squatting areas.

Alluding to the increase in the number of houses required as part of the growing population, Manning said the Government's policy was to build houses in areas where people have been squatting.

You have a lot of squatting in San Fernando East,he said. Thompson Gardens is in San Fernando East which is Manning's constituency.

Manning said Government recognised that the majority of squatters occupy State lands because they have no other choice.

He said a backlog of some 100,000 houses were needed and Government planned to deal with that situation over a ten-year period. He announced that already the public sector had built 7,950 houses and the private sector 2,000."