Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Garbage piles and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions have be­come a grow­ing con­cern for res­i­dents of the Cy­press Ridge Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ty, who are call­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, warn­ing that the prob­lems are cre­at­ing health and safe­ty risks.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, the road was rid­dled with pot­holes, forc­ing mo­torists to ma­noeu­vre around them, al­though some were un­avoid­able.

The stench from a pile of garbage near the en­trance to a clus­ter of high-rise apart­ment build­ings was al­so over­pow­er­ing.

While some of the garbage was cleared ear­li­er this week af­ter a video of the huge pile went vi­ral, waste re­mained heaped at the site, and smoke was smoul­der­ing from a burnt heap.

Res­i­dent Mar­lon Phillip said he is not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the garbage pile-up, as he lives in an­oth­er area of the com­mu­ni­ty, but de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as un­ac­cept­able.

He sug­gest­ed that a large waste dis­pos­al bin be in­stalled for res­i­dents.

As a dai­ly com­muter who us­es the road, he com­plained, “When you brakes one, you go­ing down in a next one and that mash­ing up your ve­hi­cle and you get­ting a tick­et on top of that when your ve­hi­cle mash up.”

He said the road is al­so dan­ger­ous for pedes­tri­ans.

“Even when them chil­dren walk­ing, you have to pull on the side when ve­hi­cle pass­ing be­cause cars swing­ing on you. Some­times you could swing and bounce a next man just braks­ing [sic] from the hole.”

Phillip said some res­i­dents have been fill­ing the pot­holes with grav­el and stones be­cause the au­thor­i­ties have not main­tained the road.

“Do fast and fix it be­cause I can­not pay no more tick­et,” he plead­ed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­drew Rat­tan, who has lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for more than a decade, com­plained that peo­ple from out­side the area dump their garbage at the en­trance to the apart­ment build­ings.

He said the sit­u­a­tion has led to a rat in­fes­ta­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty.

For more than a year, he said, he has been com­plain­ing to the HDC and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, but noth­ing sub­stan­tial has been done to ad­dress the is­sues. He claimed the cor­po­ra­tion told him it did not have the ma­te­ri­als need­ed to re­pair the road.

Rat­tan said res­i­dents no longer know where to turn.

Rat­tan said garbage is col­lect­ed three times a week, but the ser­vice can­not ac­com­mo­date the vol­ume of waste gen­er­at­ed by the high-rise apart­ment build­ings.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning claimed the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion has been con­tact­ed for as­sis­tance on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, but the prob­lems per­sist.

He called on them to “get their act to­geth­er.”

Mean­while, Debe East/Es­per­ance, Union Hall Coun­cil­lor Mo­hanie Ram­nar­ine said garbage was cleared ear­li­er this week, but the cor­po­ra­tion is still await­ing ma­te­ri­als to car­ry out the nec­es­sary road re­pairs.

HDC chair­man Fer­oze Khan did not re­spond to phone calls or What­sApp mes­sages up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.