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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

As Zi­ka fig­ures climb...

Suruj steps up clean-up moves

by

20160831

More than 600 truck­loads of garbage have been re­moved from homes with­in the Cou­va/ Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion with­in the past three weeks in its bid to re­duce mos­qui­to breed­ing ar­eas and pre­vent the spread of the Zi­ka virus.

Even though health au­thor­i­ties have ad­mit­ted thou­sands of peo­ple have been in­fect­ed with the virus, peo­ple are not tak­ing the per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to clean around their homes and com­mu­ni­ties.

This was ev­i­dent dur­ing Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan's tour of Guaracara yes­ter­day. Some homes still have over­grown bush­es, re­cep­ta­cles for wa­ter and sev­er­al oth­er pub­lic health vi­o­la­tions that cre­at­ed breed­ing grounds for the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes.

With­in an hour of health con­trol of­fi­cers and lit­ter war­dens vis­it­ing homes, sev­er­al peo­ple were warned about their premis­es and one per­son was served with a no­tice. Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Hen­ry Awong told the T&T Guardian over 500 res­i­dents were served with no­tices for vi­o­lat­ing the pub­lic health or­di­nances.

He said when pub­lic health of­fi­cers vis­it­ed two weeks lat­er and there was a 60 per cent com­pli­ance rate of peo­ple ad­dress­ing the vi­o­la­tions while 40 per cent were tardy. At least three peo­ple have been fined $500 for un­kept prop­er­ty. That fine has since been in­creased to $3,500.

For aban­doned prop­er­ties, he said, the cor­po­ra­tions would clean it once while the own­ers were tracked down and billed for the job.

Al­though all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived $500,000 to­wards source re­duc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, Awong said it was not enough over a long pe­ri­od.

Ram­bachan said he was sur­prised how some peo­ple kept their premis­es. He said peo­ple were un­der-ed­u­cat­ed about the caus­es and ef­fects of the Zi­ka virus and the is­sue of mi­cro­cephaly, a med­ical con­di­tion that re­sults in birth de­fects.

For that rea­son, he said, he would be form­ing neigh­bour­hood Zi­ka watch groups, led by re­spon­si­ble peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty. He said those groups would be re­spon­si­ble for im­me­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fy­ing po­ten­tial mos­qui­to breed­ing grounds and help ed­u­cate their neigh­bours.

"I be­lieve too many peo­ple in our coun­try are not se­ri­ous about clean­ing up and per­haps they do not un­der­stand the wider im­pli­ca­tions and dan­ger­ous out­comes of be­ing sub­ject­ed to the Zi­ka virus.

"The idea of hav­ing a child with mi­cro­cephaly in your house is not some­thing to be wel­comed at all. Across the world we are see­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties par­ents are faced with in hav­ing to man­age for a life­time, chil­dren born with mi­cro­cephaly," Ram­bachan added.

He said his of­fice called the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day morn­ing, re­quest­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pam­phlets on the Zi­ka virus so they could be dis­trib­uted through the con­stituen­cy. How­ev­er, he said, they were told that the min­istry was out of pam­phlets and the staff there was un­sure when new ones would be print­ed.

"I be­lieve na­tion­al­ly, more can be done about the ed­u­ca­tion. I think that the ed­u­ca­tion­al ef­forts of the Min­istry of Health are too sparse and too thin. When you get a re­sponse like that, it means to say they are not aware them­selves about the ex­tent to which there is un­der-ed­u­ca­tion of the prob­lem and we are see­ing it," Ram­bachan said.


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