Resh­ma Ra­goonath

As he marked his 54 birth­day yes­ter­day Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh was grate­ful to cel­e­brate the day with his fam­i­ly at his home in D'Abadie. How­ev­er, Kublals­ingh, who heads the High­way Re-route Move­ment, ad­mit­ted dur­ing his 21-day hunger strike which end­ed on De­cem­ber 5, he did not con­sid­er his im­pend­ing birth­day.

"I was not even think­ing that far at all. I was just mov­ing with the spir­it and I was just as­sess­ing my body func­tion and try­ing to pre­serve them as long as pos­si­ble," he said. Kublals­ingh, who sound­ed vi­brant and en­thu­si­as­tic dur­ing the brief tele­phone in­ter­view, said he was "not re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in my fu­ture or what I would do, that was up in the air. I had, there were no plans."

He ad­mit­ted that dur­ing his his­toric hunger strike, which pushed his body to the lim­it, "I was try­ing to gauge the re­sponse of the Prime Min­is­ter and the au­thor­i­ties to de­ter­mine what was the next best course of ac­tion." Kublals­ingh ad­mit­ted his body was still fac­ing the con­se­quences of his strike. He said he had lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty be­cause his legs were still weak.

"I have one prob­lem. My legs are not hold­ing up the mus­cles have weak­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly. I need to strength­en the mus­cles. Most of my time is spent in a hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion do­ing ex­er­cis­es. I am con­fined to in­side the house. I am not mov­ing around as much,"?he said. Kublals­ingh said he cut a cake to mark the oc­ca­sion. "All the cel­e­bra­tions are go­ing on around me all I did was to try to dress and look pret­ty and try to be con­ge­nial," he quipped.

more in­fo

In No­vem­ber Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, head of the High­way Re-route Move­ment, be­gan a hunger strike ab­stain­ing from food and wa­ter in a bid to have Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar stop work on the Mon De­sir/Debe leg of the Point?Fortin to San Fer­nan­do?High­way. He said the pro­posed route would have wreaked hav­oc on the wet­lands in the Oropouche la­goon and cause mas­sive flood­ing in many com­mu­ni­ties.

Kublals­ingh of­fered an al­ter­na­tive route for the high­way which he said would have less im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and would have been more cost ef­fec­tive. How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment dis­agreed. For 21 days Kublals­ingh fast­ed in the hope that he could in­flu­ence Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to not con­tin­ue the Mon De­sir/Debe leg of the high­way. Dur­ing the day he rest­ed un­der a tent near the Prime Min­is­ter's St Clair of­fice with his sup­port­ers and a pri­vate nurse who mon­i­tored his vi­tal signs.

Kublals­ingh be­came ema­ci­at­ed dur­ing the strike and had to be rushed to a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion twice for treat­ment. Many in civ­il so­ci­ety called on the Prime Min­is­ter to step in and end Kublals­ingh's strike. Even Cab­i­net min­is­ters among them For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, ex­pressed dis­plea­sure with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's han­dling of Kublals­ingh's hunger strike.

On De­cem­ber 5 Kublals­ingh end­ed his strike af­ter he agreed to terms of ref­er­ence ham­mered out be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) af­ter a two-day me­di­a­tion meet­ing. Among the terms was a re­view of the con­tentious leg of the high­way and a ces­sa­tion of work. How­ev­er, work on the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way has since re­sumed.