Shas­tri Boodan

Res­i­dents of Bal­main, Cou­va, are fear­ing an out­break of dengue in their com­mu­ni­ty un­less the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties swift­ly drain what vil­lagers call a “dengue pond” that lies be­tween Greg Street and Bal­main Gar­dens.

Gowkaran Ram­la­gan, a res­i­dent of Bal­main Gar­dens, said his son was sick and show­ing signs of hav­ing dengue. He said the pool was caused by a drain back­ing up in the area be­cause the road­way and a wall col­lapsed in­to an­oth­er drain on the west­ern side of the road, thus con­strict­ing the flow of wa­ter. 

Ram­la­gan said the area was now a haven for mos­qui­toes, rats and caimans. Ram­lan­gan said he wrote to the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion last year seek­ing as­sis­tance and giv­ing the re­gion­al body per­mis­sion to use his premis­es to un­der­take work since part of the drain pass­es through his prop­er­ty. He said the prob­lem start­ed over a year ago.

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Cou­va East/Bal­main, Ar­lene Solomon-Rame­sar, said bu­reau­cra­cy was pre­vent­ing the clear­ing of the drain. She said the cor­po­ra­tion was wait­ing on an­oth­er res­i­dent to pro­vide a non-li­a­bil­i­ty let­ter so the re­gion­al body could un­der­take work to clear the drain, which is par­tial­ly on that home­own­er’s prop­er­ty. Solomon-Rame­sar said once they got that let­ter, work could go ahead. She said the de­vel­op­ers of Bal­main Gar­dens did not hand over the de­vel­op­ment to the CT­TRC, how­ev­er, the CT­TRC does its best to as­sist res­i­dents in the area.

Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh said the prob­lem at Bal­main is one of many in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems through­out his con­stituen­cy. In­dars­ingh said the CT­TRC was strapped for funds and oth­er re­sources to get the job done. He said, “Where is the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form? All of this talk about re­form was an­oth­er ploy by the Gov­ern­ment to get peo­ple to pay prop­er­ty tax­es, and they are not do­ing any­thing.”