Geisha Kow­lessar

Res­i­dents of San­gre Grande are un­der at­tack both from the air and land.Mak­ing the com­ment was Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don, chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion at yes­ter­day's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment.The com­mit­tee was chaired by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira.

Vieira said the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to ex­am­ine ac­tiv­i­ties un­der­tak­en by the cor­po­ra­tion from 2011 to 2013 in spe­cif­ic ar­eas, in­clud­ing hu­man re­source, man­age­ment de­vel­op­ment, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, pub­lic health, in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, polic­ing and se­cu­ri­ty and dis­as­ter man­age­ment.

In giv­ing de­tails of the prob­lems, Ron­don said, "We are chal­lenged in San­gre Grande with two most im­por­tant burn­ing is­sues, both in the air and on the ground. We have thou­sands of birds that roost from 6 am to 6 pm and caus­ing re­al prob­lems in the heart of San­gre Grande."And we have end­less squat­ters from Va­len­cia to Matu­ra and they make de­mands to us...un­der hu­man­i­tar­i­an rea­sons I stretch out...I reach out to them, but it re­al­ly hard to get down to what­ev­er they want," Ron­don said.

In re­sponse, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Mar­lene Coudray said no cor­po­ra­tion and no or­gan­i­sa­tion could fix 100 per cent of the prob­lems."But in or­der to ap­pease peo­ple you have to vis­it them and you have to talk to them. I know you are try­ing your best, but we must have a sys­tem where the pub­lic is sat­is­fied," Coudray added.In an in­ter­view with the me­dia af­ter the meet­ing Ron­don said the birds were Mar­tins which had tak­en up res­i­dence in the cen­tre of San­gre Grande and re­peat­ed at­tempts to get rid of them had failed.

In Feb­ru­ary, the Sun­day Guardian high­light­ed the prob­lem in the East­ern town and use of met­al spikes and ar­ti­fi­cial owls had failed to chase away the birds."There are thou­sands of them and their drop­pings is what is caus­ing the grave con­cern, be­cause it is cost­ing us thou­sands of dol­lars every month to clean down the streets and there are two eat­ing places right there," Ron­don said yes­ter­day. "We not in­to killing them, but we want to do the best to get rid of them and in do­ing the best, it cost­ing us thou­sand of dol­lars."

He said the cor­po­ra­tion had con­tract­ed a Unit­ed States bird ex­pert to solve the prob­lem who is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in the coun­try with­in the next two weeks.The fee for this Chica­go-based ex­pert was $160,000, Ron­don added.On ex­act­ly what the ex­pert in­tend­ed to do to get rid of the birds Ron­don said: "He is sup­posed to put some gel on the elec­tri­cal wire, be­cause they are roost­ing there. And there is a sound...an owl, that re­al­ly and tru­ly get them scared."

The gel, Ron­don said, can­not be found in T&T.In­ter­im pres­i­dent of the San­gre Grande Cham­ber of Com­merce Ken­neth Bood­hu al­so com­plained the birds were caus­ing a health prob­lem.

Grandesquat­ter prob­lem

On squat­ting, Ron­don said the cor­po­ra­tion iden­ti­fied eight squat­ting ar­eas, each one com­pris­ing some 7,000 squat­ters."They are choos­ing the ar­eas and they are go­ing in the for­est be­cause they know that is where they can't find them," Ron­don said.Her urged gov­ern­ment to play a greater role in the de­liv­ery of so­cial ser­vices in these ar­eas."Peo­ple sit­ting on their bed and cook­ing in one room, and I am con­cerned about the peo­ple and what is tak­ing place with them," Ron­don said.