Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Ten­sions flared near the Tem­ple in the Sea at Wa­ter­loo, Cara­pichaima, yes­ter­day, af­ter an­i­mal rights ac­tivists were al­leged­ly threat­ened and or­dered to leave the area while at­tempt­ing to feed stray an­i­mals.

Ac­tivist Mo­han Balkissoon re­port­ed that he was ap­proached by a lo­cal res­i­dent who claimed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for an in­ci­dent last Thurs­day, in which sev­er­al stray an­i­mals were poi­soned. Balkissoon, who reg­u­lar­ly feeds an­i­mals in the area, said the en­counter oc­curred ear­ly in the morn­ing.

“I was threat­ened this morn­ing be­cause I get the mes­sage from Denise (Gan­ness) that the dog(s) was poi­soned and I come down to see if I could bury them, what­ev­er, and I meet this guy down Wa­ter­loo here this morn­ing and he ap­proached me and tell me that he want me to stop feed­ing the an­i­mal here be­cause the dog and them bite he sheep,” he said.

Balkissoon re­mained at the scene out of con­cern for fel­low ac­tivist Denise Gan­ness, a re­tired school­teacher from Char­lieville, who al­so feeds the an­i­mals in the area.

Gan­ness said the same man made threat­en­ing re­marks about her, stat­ing, “He threat­ened the gen­tle­man about my­self. He said he is wait­ing for ‘de gyul’, which is me.”

Ac­cord­ing to Gan­ness, the in­di­vid­ual be­lieves that peo­ple feed­ing the strays are en­cour­ag­ing them to at­tack his live­stock and peo­ple vis­it­ing the area.

The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion by Gan­ness, Balkissoon and Dale Balka­rans­ingh, who brought na­tion­al at­ten­tion to the sus­pect­ed poi­son­ing of the an­i­mals.

Gan­ness is call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide a ded­i­cat­ed shel­ter for stray an­i­mals, sug­gest­ing the use of one of the many aban­doned bun­ga­lows for­mer­ly op­er­at­ed by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed.

“This would pro­vide a mea­sure of pro­tec­tion for the an­i­mals,” she said.

Gan­ness not­ed that she has been us­ing her own re­sources to care for the an­i­mals, adding, “We need a lit­tle ex­tra help.”

She al­so ex­pressed her in­ten­tion to meet with the area’s MP, Jear­lean John, to seek sup­port for the cause.