Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The burnt ru­ins of an apart­ment com­plex in Pleas­antville have be­come a haven for thieves and oth­er mis­cre­ants, who use the build­ing for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.De­spite as­sur­ances from Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal the build­ing would be torn down a week af­ter all oc­cu­pants were re­lo­cat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 12, it re­mained an eye­sore.At a statu­to­ry meet­ing at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, coun­cil­lor for Les Ef­forts, An­tho­ny Ramkisson, de­mand­ed to know why the build­ing was still stand­ing.He sought an­swers from Pleas­antville coun­cil­lor Robert Par­ris say­ing: "Too of­ten build­ings are left stand­ing and it is oc­cu­pied by peo­ple who stay there for years, even though it is a haz­ard."Par­ris said he too want­ed to know why the build­ing was not de­mol­ished.

"I have vis­it­ed the build­ing and I know se­cu­ri­ty was placed there be­cause one more fam­i­ly had to move but since then that fam­i­ly had been re­lo­cat­ed so we wait and see," Par­ris said.May­or Mar­lene Coudray said she no­ticed that sev­er­al win­dows from the build­ing had been re­moved."The last time I spoke to the min­is­ter he was work­ing on it," Coudray said.She ad­vised that a let­ter would be draft­ed to Mooni­lal, re­mind­ing him the build­ing was a po­ten­tial haz­ard to the pub­lic and should be torn down.Res­i­dents of Pleas­antville said strangers have start­ed oc­cu­py­ing the apart­ment com­plex and it was pos­si­ble that il­lic­it trans­ac­tions were tak­ing place there.Coudray not­ed that the Chancery Lane com­plex was in­fest­ed with rats, mos­qui­toes and oth­er ver­min.

Be­cause of the close prox­im­i­ty to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Coudray said the cor­po­ra­tion must en­sure the area was sprayed."We do not want to have any cas­es of dengue so we have to en­sure the area is sprayed," she said.Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health Dr In­grid Poon Kin said the old hos­pi­tal area would be sprayed to avoid any pub­lic health haz­ards.Con­tact­ed for com­ment about the Pleas­antville apart­ment com­plex, Mooni­lal said he was await­ing a tech­ni­cal re­port."We are do­ing the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal work to con­firm that the build­ing can­not be re­paired for any pur­pose," he said.Mooni­lal said his min­istry would pro­ceed once the re­port was com­plet­ed.