By CAROL MATROO Sunday, August 15 2010

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Khadijah Ameen grew up in a humble home without lights and water in Valencia, but hers was a happy childhood....

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At 29, Khadijah Ameen is the youngest chairman in all the regional corporations.

Ameen was appointed chairman of the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation and was sworn into office on Tuesday.

But, despite being considered “the cub” among the more experienced councillors and chairmen, Ameen has every confidence that she and her newly appointed council were ready to serve the people.

“I am not letting age deter me. I try my best and I’m not a pretentious person. I would sit, listen, learn, observe and when it’s time to do, I do. It’s not about pretending to be strong and able, but being able to do the job,” Ameen said during an interview at her office at the corporation on Thursday.

This single mother has been involved in politics for the past 11 years, when she wasn’t even eligible to even vote.

Evident that she has definitely hit the ground running, Ameen came sprinting up the stairs to her office since she was running late for this interview. She was just rushing back from touring the corporation’s transport yard and the Insect Vector Control Unit in Tunapuna which she described as being “in a horrible mess.”

“Insect Vector Control falls under the Minister (of Health), but we have a role to play also. The people voted for us,” she explained.

Why would one so young want to get caught up in the high-power world of politics?

“I got involved because the UNC was in government at the time and I saw them making a difference in my community. I came from a community–Evergreen, Carapo — that was considered underprivileged. I had never seen the effect of a government in my community before and it was happening. At that time I got involved in the youth campaign of the UNC.

“I was always very vociferous in school and proactive where certain issues were concerned so even though I was very young at the time, I was very involved in the community and youth work.

We put together a youth group and did a lot of development work for the area that we wanted to use as a recreation ground. We didn’t even know we had a councillor. I was about 15 or 16 and the football team got together to dig a drain so the water could run out of the recreation ground,” she said.

Ameen even tutored young Common Entrance children with their reading because many could not read properly.

“Then it expanded where I taught infants and post primary on a voluntary basis. Some of the parents were semi illiterate and I would help them to write forms and letters to get services from different agencies. This was how I got involved in the community. I did not get involved in politics first, but I got involved in my community and helping people first so my heart is with people,” Ameen said.

The young chairman said she thought of her ambition in terms of her purpose saying whatever position she held was “by the way.”

“Me being chairman is by the way of helping people. Me being a councillor, if that is the position I have to hold to help people at this time, then so be it, but my aim is not to hold any particular position.

“Position does not mean that you are effective or you have the genuine interest of those you serve at heart. What is critical to me is to keep in mind my purpose.

“I will serve in whatever capacity I have to in order to get the job done,” she said.

Ameen said Tunapuna/Piarco was a rapidly developing area which she was certain would soon reach borough status. However, she felt that there was much to do before this happened.

“I think the last chairman wasn’t proactive enough. To have sat here and have a government and power, I felt they did not do enough. Perhaps it may not be an indictment on her, but on the entire regime that was just voted out. They did not seek the interest of the corporations, they did not allow the corporations to operate with greater efficiency. Most people don’t know what the corporation does,” she said.

Ameen said her aim was to make the citizens aware of the role of their regional corporation and also give councillors that power to operate in a more professional manner.

“It is not about the icing, it’s about the cake. It is about putting up a good foundation because our term is only three years. The Prime Minister has said local government elections will be called on time, so I really don’t want to focus on the icing and making things look pretty. I want to get to the bottom of good development. I don’t want us to be building a beautiful building on the hills and all the slush is washing down into people’s homes.

“There are standard procedures, standard measures that we sometimes don’t implement. My job here is not to be the best chairman, but to be part of the best council. At the end of the day more people must know about the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation. The corporation must have had an impact on more lives than it did in the past and we will be working together as a council to put our plans in place,” she said.

Ameen said while there was a strategic plan for the Corporation, it was the council that would decide how they were going forward and implementing it in terms of their priorities.

“Everything we do will be in consultation with each other, the entire council will have an input. I am the chairman, yes, but this is a team,” she said.

Ameen said complaints concerning flooding were nothing new to her as the district she previously served,—Valsayn South /Carapo— had a lot of the flood prone areas within that region. However, she has found that within the entire region, flooding has become progressively worse.

“With the development on the Northern Range, what I’ve found is that tonnes of dirt washes down into the water courses and people’s homes, and we have millions of dollars in devastation if you calculate the losses of each home. This happens over and over and no measures are put in place so people are having to pay a price for something that is not their fault,” she said.

Ameen said during Prime Minister Kamla Persad- Bissessar’s Clean and Beautify campaign they were able to clean many of the water courses and was now able to see a reduction in flooding in her area.

“The campaign is continuing and the corporation must play a great role in that because it makes our job at the end of the day easier. It means we can better serve our burgesses rather than put a plaster on a sore. We have to deal with the root of the problem. Once the water courses are clean people aren’t getting floods

“At the end of the day people complain about compensation, but it’s not that they really want compensation. They would really prefer for the floods not to come. When you have people who have so little bit, sometimes when all their life savings they put into buying furniture for their homes and one shower of rain and everything is destroyed they are devastated. There is a psychological effect on our society there as well,” Ameen said.

Ameen, who was interrupted several times during the interview to deal with corporation business, said she was not totally surprised at her new appointment because it was not uppermost on her mind.

“During the election my focus was on winning first and sorting out who would be chairman afterwards. I knew that we had to win this corporation, that the People’s Partnership had to take up governance here because I sat as a councillor here before and saw the previous council practically refuse to participate in the Clean and Beautify campaign, while the rest of TT were seizing the opportunity to make a difference.

“I really didn’t stop to consider who would be chairman or if I should try and convince my party to put me to serve, I didn’t. I worked with my political leader even before she became political leader and I have been very dedicated to the party and the party would have seen qualities in me to lead them to make that decision. I didn’t advocate for the position. If they ask me to serve I’ll serve and I’ve always operated like that,” she said.

Ameen admitted that this new regime had a long way to go in local government, but said she had a lot of confidence in Local Government Minister Chandresh Sharma in terms of making regional corporations better able to respond to the needs of the citizens.

Ameen has come a long way from a very humble background, which she said kept her grounded and in touch with the people.

She attended St George’s College in Barataria from 1993 to 1998, a self-confessed “proud Georgian, while completing her A levels at the Arima Senior Comprehensive School. She was awaiting her A Level results when she began to campaign with the UNC and her first job after graduating was with the URP in Arima.

“My parents did not want me working there, but I’m glad that I did now because it gave me the experience of dealing with some of the most difficult people. After there I worked with the National Insurance Board and I became local government councillor in 2003 when I was 21 years old.

“I came in with the same passion I had in my community, I was just doing it on a bigger scale. I chose to become a councillor full time because I really wanted to dedicate myself into doing a good job. At that time I put off going to UWI (University of the West Indies) because my three brothers were going to school and I had to support my parents. At that time you had to pay to go to UWI so I thought I would work and go to UWI in the evenings. Of course I didn’t get around to starting at UWI until about two years ago,” Ameen said with a laugh.

“I was always involved in public speaking and debating, not just for the sake of talking, but researching the issues.

“I recently completed a certificate on public administration and I’ve already signed on and been accepted to do my degree on government. I intend to do a double major in government and economics. It’s not a great challenge, but I find it a challenge to find the time to do it,” she admitted.

Ameen grew up in a humble home without lights and water in Valencia, but hers was a happy childhood.

“I think how I grew up and where I grew up have a lot to do with how grounded I am. We grew up in Valencia and it didn’t have a road to our house, there was a track. We had a parcel of land that was about five acres with a lot of fruit trees and a river. The house was wooden and we had the freedom to develop naturally, to be ourselves without negative outside influence

“We didn’t have a television until we were big. For many years I studied by either lamp or flambeau, even up to when I was doing A levels, and it didn’t bother us because we didn’t know any differently. We didn’t have a computer to do our work, but we were coming first in test. When we were young my mother would sit and read with us. She always took a keen interest in what we were doing is school.

“My father and uncles were always discussing politics and current affairs. We used to listen and I became very opinionated. We were firm about what we believed in. I grew up swimming in the river, climbing trees, fighting with my brothers,” Ameen recalled.

The chairman said family was and still is very important to her.

“If I have to be on any debate or programme the first person I would ask their opinion is my mother because even though she would compliment us when we did well, the world could think that you are perfect, if there is a fault with you, she will tell you. She doesn’t get carried away by the hype and I try to emulate that. She is the backbone in our family,” Ameen said.