THE PEOPLE who could have potentially been leaders of local African communities have failed Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians, says National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB) chairman and radio station owner Louis Lee Sing.

’This group of successful Afro-Trinbagonian(s) see themselves as Trinidadians and nothing else. The plight of the less fortunate of his race do not matter,’ he commented.

Delivering an address to the Eastern Emancipation Cultural Committee, Sangre Grande, on Tuesday, Lee Sing said the country’s African leaders have been killed one by one over the last few months, referring to the 20 ’community leaders’ who attempted to broker a so-called peace treaty in 2006.

Lee Sing commented that gang leaders experienced such success because ’as a large sector of this very plural society, Afro-Trinidadian and Tobagonian leaders have failed our people’.

He also criticised African leaders for their ’absolute silence’ on fundamental issues affecting Afro-Trinbagonians.

Lee Sing said the sacrifices made by Afro-Trinbagonian leaders in the past have been in vain, noting the contributions of political activist Makandal Daaga, Emancipation Support Committee chairman Khafra Kambon and trade unionist Raffique Shah and others ’in bringing Trinidad and Tobago to its senses and the gains made back in the 1970’s’.

He said these gains have dissipated and ’we are right back where we started and worse off’.

He noted that for Emancipation Day, to be celebrated tomorrow, citizens dress up in clothing believed to be from the motherland and their ’Africanness’ is stirred up in their consciousness, but they then shut away this ’Africanness’ until next July , like taking down a Christmas tree.

Lee Sing also blasted the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP), saying that the ’killing fields abound over the crumbs of that miserable, blighted and sickening programme’.

He added: ’I say URP was invented to keep Afro-Trinbagonians in the main enslaved, in shackles and we all know the end product of slavery and shackles was often death.’

He suggested that there be groups in this country to develop strategic plans for families and communities in the context of ’mother T&T’.

’We must act collectively, as a group. We have to determine where we wish to move our people to,’ he said.