Romy in Trefnant

Romy Salvador left the Phillipines in 1973 and now lives in Trefnant, Denbighshire. After spending time living in England and Scotland, Romy settled in Wales and he and his wife brought up their children here.

Very much a community person, Romy is very active in the north east Wales community. He devotes time to serve his Welsh community and also flies the flag for Filipinos in north Wales. He is Chair of the North Wales Filipino Association, on the Board of the North Wales Race Equality Network and is a committee member of Trefnant village.

The main reason Romy attended the Tea Dance event in Denbigh was because he is worried about the lack of community and family cohesion. He believes that people should do more to foster prosperous communities to offer a safe and healthy environment for work, living and raising families. He sees the Assembly as a help and takes the opportunity to talk to councillors, AMs and MP's whenever he can.

He says:

I believe that talking and listening to what's around us is the best way of communicating and understanding people. I really enjoyed the All Wales Convention meeting in Denbigh. There were a lot of people there and many good ideas were exchanged. I think the Convention is a good idea - it's a good way to communicate with the people of Wales and since the meeting I've let people in the community know about the Convention."

The Assembly has been established for over ten years now and I think the time is right for a referendum and to have full law-making powers. Scotland has much more law-making powers than Wales.

Comparing the political situation to family, Romy says:

Children have to leave the nest at some point when they're old enough. The Assembly is old enough now and now is the right time for us to have more independence and be separated from Westminster. We can always be guided from Westminster like a mother and father would guide their children but it's time for us to be free and let us get on with things on our own."

I think, with further powers, Wales will get better as a country. We need full-law-making powers to improve. If we make a mistake, we can learn from it. After all no one's perfect.