Laventille residents beg for help as garbage piles up in community

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

For two months, res­i­dents of Leon Street, Laven­tille, claim they have had to deal with a grow­ing mound of garbage in their neigh­bour­hood, as san­i­ta­tion work­ers have stopped col­lect­ing the refuse.

The res­i­dents are, there­fore, ap­peal­ing to the rel­e­vant agen­cies to act ur­gent­ly, as they fear a fur­ther pile-up of garbage could pose a se­ri­ous health prob­lem and even pre­vent ac­cess to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment build­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, the blue dump­ster near the en­trance to the apart­ment com­plex was over­flow­ing with garbage bags, bro­ken fur­ni­ture and oth­er refuse, which al­so ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in small­er heaps at the side of the road, near a home.

Res­i­dent An­drew Watkins said he vague­ly re­called see­ing the last garbage col­lec­tion done some­time in No­vem­ber, not­ing that none of the res­i­dents knew why san­i­ta­tion work­ers had stopped pick­ing up rub­bish in the neigh­bour­hood.

“No­body ain’t con­tact us, no­body ain’t tell us noth­ing. We just see­ing garbage pil­ing up and no­body is pick­ing it up,” he said.

“We need them to come and deal with this as soon as pos­si­ble. This is the en­trance to the (HDC) build­ings here and every­body has to take this scent, peo­ple can’t even have their own win­dows open be­cause they scent has them up­set.”

Watkins al­so warned that while res­i­dents have done their best to clear garbage bags from spilling on­to the road­way and block­ing traf­fic, there was on­ly so much that could be done.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Mar­cus Bai­ley, lament­ed that in the ab­sence of any col­lec­tion sys­tem, res­i­dents con­tin­ue to dump their refuse in the area, adding to the clut­ter. He said while res­i­dents of near­by Do­ra­ta Street were able to clear their garbage dump­ster, the sit­u­a­tion on Leon Street was too dire to ad­dress with­out help from trucks to car­ry the garbage away.

“It’s worse than ever be­fore, we’ve called the pri­vate con­trac­tors with the (San Juan) Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion but we nev­er got on­to them.

“We al­ready start­ing to see prob­lems with rats com­ing around here. How much can we re­al­ly re­move on our own? We need a trac­tor or a big truck to come and take it out,” Bai­ley said.

With­in the same apart­ment build­ing, res­i­dent Michelle Primus raised con­cerns over falling de­bris from an aban­doned, di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing.

Point­ing to ex­posed beams on the roof, which ap­peared to be sup­port­ed by drain­pipes along the out­er wall of the build­ing, Primus said she was con­cerned that the HDC and oth­er agen­cies would in­ter­vene on­ly af­ter some­one was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured.

“Lit­tle chil­dren does be run­ning up and down all on the bas­ket­ball court, so it’s a clear dan­ger. If some­thing hap­pens, you’ll see every­body run­ning to help or run­ning to do this and that.

“It’s on­ly when some­body is hurt you will see peo­ple, oth­er than that, you on your own.”

Primus said the build­ing was cleared of res­i­dents 12 years ago and has been aban­doned since then. She said while en­gi­neers and con­trac­tors were seen near the build­ing late last year, there has been no up­date on whether the struc­ture will be re­paired or de­mol­ished.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, HDC chair­man Fer­oze Khan sug­gest­ed that ques­tions be sent via What­sApp. Ques­tions and pho­tos of the struc­ture were sent via What­sApp but no re­sponse was re­ceived up to news time.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, who con­firmed that is­sues with the col­lec­tion of garbage was “an HDC mat­ter.”

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment, San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC) chair­man Richard Wal­cott al­so con­firmed that the col­lec­tion of garbage on the com­pound was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the HDC.