Shal­iza Has­sanali

In the height of the Yule­tide sea­son, St Joseph MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has been caught in the mid­dle of a con­fu­sion among con­stituents of Palm Road, North Val­sayn, over Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions at a pri­vate res­i­dent's home called Ram­s­ingh's Trop­i­cal Won­der­land.On one side, a res­i­dent likened Deyals­ingh's be­hav­iour to that of Ebenez­er Scrooge, who de­spis­es Christ­mas and all things which give peo­ple hap­pi­ness.

While on the oth­er, some res­i­dents claim that Deyals­ingh has been try­ing to find a so­lu­tion to two prob­lems they have been fac­ing night­ly–traf­fic con­ges­tion, and not be­ing able to gain ac­cess in­to their homes due to the steady stream of mo­torists fre­quent­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.Though the beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed house which be­longs to busi­ness­man Az­iz Ram­s­ingh has been at­tract­ing hun­dreds of cu­ri­ous peo­ple, it has brought some lev­el of in­con­ve­nience and anger to sev­er­al res­i­dents who live on the bustling street.

It took Ram­s­ingh four weeks to in­stall the lights, which are adorned in and out­side his home, and on the side­walk.The Ram­s­inghs al­so erect­ed a steel struc­ture over the road­way with strings of pul­sat­ing LED lights, which throws off beau­ti­ful de­signs on the road.The dec­o­ra­tions, cost­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, con­sists of over 500,000 LED light bulbs which were im­port­ed from Chi­na in three 40-foot freight con­tain­ers.

The dec­o­ra­tions have been draw­ing fam­i­lies from all over the coun­try, from as far as Princes Town, Biche and Ma­yaro.

Ack­bar Khan­dis­ap­point­ed in MP

On Fri­day, 82-year-old Jus­tice of the Peace Ack­bar Khan, who has been dec­o­rat­ing his prop­er­ty with lights for 14 years, said Ram­s­ingh came to him last week al­most in tears to com­plain that Deyals­ingh had "threat­ened" to have his dec­o­ra­tions re­moved since it was caus­ing too much con­ges­tion in the neigh­bour­hood.Khan and Ram­s­ingh are next-door neigh­bours.Khan said he told Deyals­ingh he was "dis­ap­point­ed" in him be­cause the dec­o­ra­tions were put up once a year for the chil­dren's en­joy­ment.

Asked if Deyals­ingh be­haved like Ebenez­er Scrooge, Khan replied, "I think so. I sup­port that."Khan said he spoke to a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial of the PNM, and the mat­ter even­tu­al­ly died.

Deyals­ingh: I did my du­ty as re­quest­ed

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh, de­fend­ing his po­si­tion, said he has no au­thor­i­ty to re­move the dec­o­ra­tions.Deyals­ingh ex­plained that three mem­bers of the Val­sayn Res­i­dents As­so­ci­a­tion–Tim­my Nath, Dr Hafeez Waris and Za­mir Muzaf­far–ap­proached him to help deal with the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion.

The res­i­dents, Deyals­ingh said, al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about the dec­o­rat­ed steel struc­ture over the road­way and not be­ing able to en­ter their homes. "They asked me to put for­ward their con­cerns and that was the end of my in­volve­ment. I did my du­ty as re­quest­ed by the res­i­dents." Deyals­ingh said he ad­vised the mem­bers that if they want­ed to take the mat­ter fur­ther, they should write to him through the as­so­ci­a­tion out­lin­ing their con­cerns and he would raise the mat­ter with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty.

"As of now, they have not writ­ten to me. I am in no po­si­tion to do any­thing fur­ther with­out their guid­ance and con­sent." Deyals­ingh said un­til he gets some­thing in writ­ing from them, he would not move for­ward. How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh ques­tioned who au­tho­rised the erec­tion of the steel struc­ture. "That is the is­sue now." He main­tained that at no time did he ap­proach any­one "ag­gres­sive­ly," say­ing that was not his style. Deyals­ingh said he did not want to get in­to a war of words with Khan.

Muzaf­far: Deyals­ingh in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion De­scrib­ing Ram­s­ingh as a com­mu­ni­ty work­er and a close friend, Muzaf­far said he thinks "the mat­ter was get­ting out of hand," since five streets in the com­mu­ni­ty were faced with grid­lock night­ly.

Muzaf­far said while it was a de­light to see the joy in the chil­dren's faces, "it is cre­at­ing some con­cern and in­con­ve­nience" for some res­i­dents, main­ly with home­own­ers hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting in­to their dri­ve­way be­cause ve­hi­cles are of­ten parked in front of their front gates and lawns when they ar­rive home. He said the prob­lem was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the road which was made one-way from 6 pm to mid­night. "I don't know if that is with or with­out the ap­proval of the po­lice," he added.

Muzaf­far said the prob­lem would in­ten­si­fy as Christ­mas draws clos­er. "Maybe it has gone a lit­tle too far now, be­cause there are lights over the road." Muzaf­far said the res­i­dents are dis­pleased but are re­fus­ing to come for­ward. He said the so­lu­tion lies with prop­er traf­fic man­age­ment. Muzaf­far al­so said some of the res­i­dents sug­gest­ed that the lights be switched on at 8 pm in­stead of 6 pm.

"They al­so need to put a one-way in and one-way out in­to Val­sayn, as­sum­ing that the au­thor­i­ties are in agree­ment with what is go­ing on, be­cause on many oc­ca­sions it (traf­fic) has backed up to the high­way." Muzaf­far said Deyals­ingh was in a "pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion" since peo­ple want to know why he would want to pull the plug on the dec­o­ra­tions, while on the oth­er hand res­i­dents were be­ing in­con­ve­nienced. "I think our MP is caught in the mid­dle try­ing to sat­is­fy all sides." Ram­s­ingh re­fused to com­ment on the mat­ter on Fri­day.