Kevon Felmine

The oil spill clean-up at La Brea hit a snag yes­ter­day, af­ter Cof­fee Street res­i­dents blocked ac­cess to the beach to protest Petrotrin's han­dling of the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter."We did not ask for this. We did not ask for oil on our doorstep," 33-year-old Vir­gil Gilbert said as par­ents and chil­dren raised plac­ards dur­ing the demon­stra­tion, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was fool­ing the na­tion about the state of their com­mu­ni­ty.

They were al­so crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment that the oil spill was not as dras­tic as was por­trayed in the me­dia."We are say­ing enough is enough, be­cause it has been 15 days since this in­ci­dent...Peo­ple are talk­ing on the news, say­ing that they have every­thing un­der con­trol," Gilbert said."I work out there and every day there is a new set of oil com­ing up. What is go­ing on with re­gard to the oil is that the oil is on the seabed it­self and when the tide ris­es, it comes up.

"So this is a work in progress. This is not go­ing to be fin­ished in two weeks."There are vil­lagers and chil­dren who are go­ing in the hos­pi­tal. My sis­ter's daugh­ter was in the hos­pi­tal, a youth across there was on his back for a cou­ple of days and there is a guy here who can­not even come near us be­cause he can­not han­dle the fumes.

"What en­raged the peo­ple is the fact that Petrotrin sent no rep­re­sen­ta­tive to speak with the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing on the ground. It is day 15 and no one is say­ing any­thing. That is enough to get any­one vex."Moth­ers yes­ter­day plead­ed with the Gov­ern­ment for more as­sis­tance, as they said chil­dren were falling ill every day as oil con­tin­ues to wash ashore.

Scores of res­i­dents liv­ing near Carat Shed Beach and Point Suave al­so yes­ter­day flocked to the Brighton Sports Club to com­plain to Petrotrin com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer George Com­mis­siong and HSE staff mem­ber Stead­man Cado­gan. Res­i­dents there com­plained that no doc­tors and nurs­es were at the La Brea Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre as promised. Lat­er on a nurse ar­rived, but there was no doc­tor.

Com­mis­siong said the Gov­ern­ment and Petrotrin were al­ready look­ing in­to evac­u­at­ing the peo­ple and that all the res­i­dents' prob­lems were be­ing looked at. "We know they had some con­cerns and we were told that if con­cerns were not ad­dressed that they were go­ing to take some form of protest ac­tion," he said.But Gilbert said yes­ter­day's protest was on­ly phase one of res­i­dents' ac­tion, as lawyers had vis­it­ed them and of­fered rep­re­sen­ta­tion on their be­half. If Petrotrin did not act swift­ly, le­gal ac­tion would be tak­en, he said.

"The next course of ac­tion is that we have lawyers who are will­ing to fight for us, be­cause they too find this is un­fair," he said."Phase two would be the lawyers get­ting in con­tact with Petrotrin to let them know what is go­ing on with us.