The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) says busi­ness own­ers have pledged to pool their own mon­ey to pay for mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion ef­forts in the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. The par­ty is al­so ac­cus­ing Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh of “bury­ing his head in the sand” re­gard­ing the spread of dengue, a claim the min­is­ter ve­he­ment­ly de­nied.

The UNC al­so de­nounced Deyals­ingh for “bul­ly­ing” the pop­u­la­tion with the threat of fines rather than be­ing proac­tive in deal­ing with mos­qui­to breed­ing grounds. There have been at least two con­firmed deaths in south Trinidad due to the mos­qui­to-borne virus, with near­ly 200 re­port­ed cas­es.

At the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal posit­ed, “Just like deal­ing with crime and oth­er prob­lems, they seek to bul­ly the pop­u­la­tion to tell you if you have a buck­et of wa­ter in your yard and you don’t clean it up, the fine is $3,500, but when you go to state fa­cil­i­ties, the com­pound of Gov­ern­ment schools, the com­pound of hos­pi­tals, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, you will see be­cause of the poor in­fra­struc­ture, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed wa­ter, and mos­qui­toes. So, who is go­ing to charge the Gov­ern­ment?”

Mooni­lal sought to link the high num­ber of dengue cas­es with what he called a col­lapse of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture and a fail­ure to pro­vide re­sources to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. He said this had forced mem­bers of the pub­lic to of­fer their own mon­ey to help com­bat dengue.

“In my con­stituen­cy, I can tell you, there are busi­ness­men in the Pe­nal/Debe area who are say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is not giv­ing the cor­po­ra­tion mon­ey, we will pool our re­sources, buy the chem­i­cals our­selves, and pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty. Be­cause when their chil­dren are in the hos­pi­tal and their loved ones die, the PNM does not care,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal said the PNM Gov­ern­ment would “dig out your eye” as they were de­void of com­pas­sion.

Mean­while, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen crit­i­cised the Health Min­is­ter for be­ing re­ac­tive to the dengue is­sue. Ameen said the min­is­ter wait­ed for cas­es to rise be­fore clamp­ing down on house­holds that kept their en­vi­ron­ment con­ducive for mos­qui­toes to thrive and mul­ti­ply.

“I am call­ing on the Health Min­is­ter to stop politi­cis­ing the dengue is­sue, it is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. The da­ta and sta­tis­tics sup­port what we are say­ing, and we are not mak­ing un­re­al­is­tic re­quests,” Ameen said.

Ameen, who is the shad­ow min­is­ter of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, said In­sect Vec­tor Di­vi­sion Units across the coun­try were un­der­staffed.

“We have sev­er­al re­ports of ar­eas where there are no ve­hi­cles or ve­hi­cles that are par­tial­ly func­tion­al,” she claimed. She added that em­ploy­ees had been known to spend their own mon­ey to en­sure they could do their du­ties.

“The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Health, the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and the Min­is­ter of Works to do what is nec­es­sary to re­duce the dengue out­break in Trinidad and To­ba­go, to re­duce the breed­ing grounds for mos­qui­toes, and to en­sure the mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion is con­trolled in every part of Trinidad as well as in To­ba­go,” Ameen said.

The St Au­gus­tine MP al­so took aim at Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh for say­ing that spray­ing in­sec­ti­cide in com­mu­ni­ties could be bad for the en­vi­ron­ment, with lim­it­ed suc­cess at times. She said that while the min­is­ter was wor­ried about “over­spray­ing”, he ran the risk of “un­der­spray­ing”.

Ameen al­so called for the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that more lit­ter war­dens were em­ployed to iden­ti­fy ar­eas where clean-up op­er­a­tions are nec­es­sary.

Deyals­ingh says sen­si­ti­sa­tion start­ed in Feb­ru­ary

In re­sponse, the Health Min­is­ter told Guardian Me­dia that, un­like the UNC, he would not politi­cise the is­sue.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, how­ev­er, sought to counter the claim that he was be­ing re­ac­tive. The min­is­ter sent doc­u­ments to show that since Feb­ru­ary, his min­istry had be­gun sen­si­ti­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties on dengue fever.

The doc­u­ment showed that apart from ed­u­ca­tion dri­ves, the min­istry in Feb­ru­ary al­so com­menced in­door resid­ual spray­ing, ther­mal fog­ging, and ul­tra-low vol­ume spray­ing.

The min­is­ter main­tained that spray­ing alone could not be the so­lu­tion, as he said over­ex­po­sure to chem­i­cal spray­ing re­sult­ed in two dan­ger­ous out­comes—the mos­qui­toes built up re­sis­tance and it could al­so be harm­ful to hu­mans and an­i­mals. Deyals­ingh added, “Clean­ing sur­round­ings is a far bet­ter strat­e­gy than chem­i­cal spray­ing. If per­sons fall sick from chem­i­cals, it’s on them.”