Kevon Felmine

Res­i­dents of Phoenix Park and Savonet­ta yes­ter­day cau­tioned Gov­ern­ment that any plant con­struct­ed in their com­mu­ni­ty will be tak­en apart, as they will not tol­er­ate any en­vi­ron­men­tal threat to their lives. The warn­ing came as vil­lagers re­moved over 30 posts that were re­cent­ly in­stalled at the site of the $2.7 bil­lion CariSal chem­i­cal plant at Point Lisas.

Cit­ing the fail­ures of MPs for their ar­eas, Rudranath In­dars­ingh and Er­rol Mc Leod in aid­ing them and hav­ing ex­haust­ed all diplo­mat­ic mea­sures to halt the con­struc­tion, they say they are now tak­ing mat­ters in­to their own hands.

Speak­ing at the site, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh once again called on Gov­ern­ment to re­lo­cate the chlo­rine and al­ka­line plant to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. He said such a plant will de­te­ri­o­rate the health of the com­mu­ni­ty which is al­ready sur­round­ed by in­dus­tries and two sand pits.

He ex­plained that res­i­dents met with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice on Thurs­day and were told that the lo­ca­tion of the plant would be re­viewed. How­ev­er, he said they are yet to re­ceive a re­sponse and that more work has been con­tin­u­ing on the site over the past week.

"We vis­it­ed the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice about three days ago and at the end of the meet­ing, de­spite some am­bi­gu­i­ty and am­biva­lence on their part, they told us they will re­view the lo­ca­tion of CariSal. We have not got­ten any re­ply from them and three days af­ter that meet­ing we came and saw trac­tors grad­ing down the area.

They put con­tain­ers and they be­gan to put up these poles. We have al­ways said that the vil­lagers here-the work­ers who work in the es­tates, the vil­lager in Savonet­ta and Phoenix Park-that any plant which is placed in this area will be de­con­struct­ed be­cause it is ab­solute­ly dan­ger­ous and it is an atro­cious act by this Gov­ern­ment."

Not on­ly were the poles re­moved but the vil­lager re­placed the con­crete foot­ings with small man­go, lime and sour­sop trees, say­ing that the true pur­pose of the land was for agri­cul­ture. Kublals­ingh said the area was for­mer­ly giv­en to ex-Ca­roni work­ers. He said they were try­ing to get this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to give them back their lands.

Ramdeo By­roo, who lives at Phoenix Park, said CariSal has no track record of build­ing and op­er­at­ing a chem­i­cal plant any­where else in the world. He said they were now com­ing to Trinidad to ac­cess cheap gas and labour while de­stroy­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of over 10,000.

"We don't want them here, we just want them to re­lo­cate. We are not against de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try, these gov­ern­ment peo­ple think we are go­ing against them and we are stop­ping pro­duc­tion. But the point is that we are ask­ing to have a peace­ful life, free of all these dust and chem­i­cal emis­sion that will be com­ing out."