Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Fer­ri­er Cir­cu­lar, Guayagua­yare, are call­ing for Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny to re­lo­cate the el­der­ly and chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty un­til it cleans up the oil spill. The call comes af­ter an el­der­ly woman fell ill from the fumes that now en­vel­op the area.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a vis­it, res­i­dent Randy Ha­gley said his moth­er-in-law, Sheila Mitchell, com­plained of dif­fi­cul­ties breath­ing around 3.15 am and was rushed to the Ma­yaro Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

"The scent was so strong that you can't sleep and breathe in your own house. We liv­ing on top the hill," he said.

He ex­plained that the scent be­comes worse at night.

"They have an am­bu­lance pass­ing here in the day check­ing peo­ple. The prob­lem is, in the day the sun will raise the vapours and in the night it will sup­press it so you would smell it across the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

"We want Her­itage to re­lo­cate the se­nior peo­ple and the lit­tle ones. Who could take it and want to stay, fine. We ain't ask­ing for much, you know. It's just to re­lo­cate the old peo­ple un­til you fix your prob­lem."

Mitchell's son, Jame­son Rigs is al­so the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Guayagua­yare Vil­lage Coun­cil. He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quest­ed the el­der­ly peo­ple be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed.

"We made re­quests for per­sons who are deeply af­fect­ed to be re­lo­cat­ed be­cause you don't want the am­bu­lance, just as this morn­ing, car­ry­ing some­one away and then bring­ing them back in­to the same sit­u­a­tion," he said.

A res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty for the last 57 years, Tere­sa Joseph said the fumes and dust from the spill were al­so con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the wa­ter in their tanks and bar­rels. She said nu­mer­ous el­der­ly peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty have been com­plain­ing about the scent.

MP Rush­ton Paray has asked Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to pro­vide a com­plet­ed Air Qual­i­ty Re­port, an En­vi­ron­men­tal re­port from the IMA on the im­pact to the wa­ter­course where there was some spill-over, the re­pur­pos­ing of the Guayagua­yare Health Fa­cil­i­ty to a 24-hour A&E to fa­cil­i­tate any health im­pact to the res­i­dents of the area un­til the sit­u­a­tion is re­solved, full stand­by am­bu­lance ser­vice to Ma­yaro/San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy to keep the Of­fice of the MP and the Vil­lage Coun­cil up­dat­ed, a sin­gle point of con­tact for all claims of dam­ages by res­i­dents, and an es­ti­mat­ed date of the end of clean-up op­er­a­tions when vil­lagers' lives can re­turn to nor­mal.