Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

It took three weeks for Gov­ern­ment to de­clare Clax­ton Bay a hot spot area but res­i­dents are say­ing the move came a lit­tle too late. With two res­i­dents al­ready mur­dered and sev­er­al oth­ers robbed dur­ing the state of emer­gency, many of the res­i­dents of the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty said they were heart­ened by the reg­u­lar po­lice pa­trols that they had seen since the cur­few was im­ple­ment­ed. There are sev­er­al known drug ar­eas in Clax­ton Bay, which the po­lice say were "hidey-holes" for known crim­i­nals.

Drug blocks flour­ish at Sum Sum Hill, Spring­vale, Di­a­mond and St John's Trace, po­lice say. Many youths have be­come men­tal­ly un­sta­ble be­cause of drug abuse while oth­ers are con­tent to spend their time by the sea­side, push­ing drugs and idling. Taxi dri­vers, who were ac­cus­tomed to work­ing the "grave­yard shift" be­fore the state of emer­gency, hoped the Gov­ern­ment and the au­thor­i­ties would use their time to ar­rest the thieves who have held the res­i­dents at ran­som for sev­er­al years. At the Clax­ton Bay Junc­tion, groups of reg­u­lar limers were heard dis­cussing the cur­few.

Gun­ness De­onar­ine, who has a speech dis­abil­i­ty, al­so made his views heard. He said: " I find it al­right. It good they make here a hotspot." Sharon Ish­mael and Nao­mi Sood­een, who went to buy veg­eta­bles, said they had been sleep­ing bet­ter since Clax­ton Bay be­came a hot spot. "Be­fore, we could not come out to buy any­thing here. We had to stay in­side be­hind bur­glar proof. We are see­ing many po­lice pa­trols and it is a good thing. "I feel safe here now. This cur­few should go on for an­oth­er three months," Ish­mael said, as she packed toma­toes in­to a bag.

Sood­een al­so said she felt as­sured by the heavy po­lice pres­ence. "Be­fore the state of emer­gency, we would nev­er see pa­trols here. There are so many ar­eas where pa­trols were need­ed. "Nor­mal­ly, we would not walk out in some ar­eas but now we can. We are hap­py the Gov­ern­ment saw it fit to have this state of emer­gency," Sood­een said. Ricky Per­sad, who sold pro­duce from a stall, said be­fore the emer­gency he closed up at 5.30 pm. He said night time ven­dors would buy his goods to sell af­ter dark­ness had set­tled. "The on­ly bad thing now is that I don't have those ven­dors buy­ing from me be­cause they can­not sell at night but apart from that I am hap­py about it," Per­sad said. Yvonne Noel, of Flem­ming Hill, said since the cur­few was en­forced, two mur­ders oc­curred in the area. "They were sup­posed to have made here a hot spot from the first day," Noel said.

Ran­dolph Be­dassie al­so said the post cur­few killings could have been avert­ed if the cur­few had been de­clared in Clax­ton Bay from the in­cep­tion. Be­dassie said: "Every­body knows that Clax­ton Bay over­run with ban­dits and drug push­ers. We have been suf­fer­ing be­cause of this. We can­not come out of our hous­es with­out fear­ing that some­one will break in." He added that the mur­der of Satyam "Sug­ars" Nanan, 31, of Cedar Trace, Clax­ton Bay, who was gunned down while stand­ing along the Clax­ton Bay Junc­tion on Sep­tem­ber 4, had left many peo­ple trau­ma­tised. How­ev­er, while most of the res­i­dents re­joiced, sev­er­al fish­er­men said they were dis­pleased the cur­few had ex­tend­ed three nau­ti­cal miles along a 362 kilo­me­tre span of the coast­line.

Boysie Sook­nanan said that move may like­ly shut down the fish­ing in­dus­try in sev­er­al ar­eas. He said fish­er­men were cur­rent­ly catch­ing fish close to the shore. Say­ing he liked the idea of mak­ing Clax­ton Bay a hot spot, Sook­nanan said the de­ci­sion to have a cur­few at sea as well should be re­con­sid­ered. He not­ed that over 100 fish­er­men de­pend­ed on fish­ing to sup­port their fam­i­lies. "If they want to do search­es at sea, we have no prob­lems. They can do their search­es and those peo­ple who have le­git­i­mate pa­pers as reg­is­tered fish­er­men should be al­lowed to fish," Sook­nanan added. Mean­while, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Rudranath In­dars­ingh said the de­ci­sion to ex­tend the cur­few came about be­cause of in­tel­li­gence.

He said de­spite the con­cerns raised, the coun­try would ben­e­fit a great deal from the emer­gency. He not­ed the on­ly peo­ple who were con­demn­ing the cur­few were the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers. Po­lice in St Mar­garet's said they would con­tin­ue to step up pa­trols in known drug ar­eas with­in Clax­ton Bay. Of­fi­cers said sev­er­al drug deal­ers had gone in­to hid­ing but they would be flushed out as the days go by.