Kali­fa Clyne

Say­ing that a lot need­ed to be done in terms of in­fra­struc­ture for the Cau­ra com­mu­ni­ty, lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, Sookdeo Bharath said the res­i­dents may be stand­ing in the way of their own de­vel­op­ment. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Bharath said he had put sev­er­al plans for­ward to the Cau­ra Vil­lage Coun­cil but the coun­cil had dis­agreed and re­ject­ed them. At a meet­ing on Mon­day at the La Veron­i­ca RC Church in Cau­ra, res­i­dents had crit­i­cised Bharath's treat­ment of com­mu­ni­ty is­sues. The meet­ing was held by the Min­istry of Plan­ning as a con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents on the min­istry's land use pol­i­cy for the Cau­ra Val­ley area.

Yes­ter­day, Bharath said it was un­fair to say he had not been treat­ing with Cau­ra's is­sues. "I have en­gaged res­i­dents and spoke to mem­bers of the vil­lage coun­cils and even ex­pressed a de­sire to be in­vit­ed to their meet­ings but they do not in­vite me," said Bharath. He said be­cause of this he spoke to res­i­dents in­di­vid­u­al­ly to as­cer­tain the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty. "Since I came to of­fice I have ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al ini­tia­tives as per­tains to in­fra­struc­ture on be­half of the Cau­ra peo­ple," said Bharath. Bharath said he had got the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to in­stall sev­er­al wa­ter tanks at strate­gic lo­ca­tions in the com­mu­ni­ty.

He added that at present, WASA of­fi­cials were con­duct­ing a fea­si­bil­i­ty study on the is­sue of pipe-borne wa­ter to the area. He said he had al­so ap­proached the Min­istry of Works on the is­sue of re­pair­ing the Cau­ra Roy­al Road. Bharath said he had al­so pre­sent­ed plans to the vil­lage coun­cil to build a guest house near the riv­er to be run by res­i­dents. "To­tal in­fra­struc­ture would take some time and is most­ly out of the cor­po­ra­tion's hands, but with the projects be­ing pro­posed in­fra­struc­ture would come," said Bharath.

Pres­i­dent of the Cau­ra Vil­lage Coun­cil, Sa­heed Ali, said he be­lieved that the sit­u­a­tion be­tween Bharath and some res­i­dents could be re­solved. "We want to put the past in the past and move for­ward," he said.

He ad­mit­ted that some of the plans Bharath had pre­sent­ed had been re­ject­ed out­right by res­i­dents. "He want­ed to put a guest house on the riv­er bank and we felt that would de­stroy the qual­i­ty of the wa­ter," said Ali. He said though the coun­cil had giv­en Bharath a sched­ule as to their statu­to­ry meet­ings he (Bharath) would be per­son­al­ly in­vit­ed to the next meet­ing.