Shas­tri Boodan

Fed up of wait­ing on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) to clean a pile of garbage at Bhim Street, for­mer May­or and MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan start­ed mov­ing the smelly pile him­self.

On Sun­day, Ram­bachan and a team of work­ers he hired, start­ed load­ing bags of garbage and con­struc­tion rub­ble on to a truck for dis­pos­al. Ram­bachan said he was tired of hav­ing to deal with the CBC, who he said was giv­ing him a runaround.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Ram­bachan said a con­trac­tor dumped con­struc­tion rub­ble on the road­side two months ago. Since then the area has be­come a dump­ing ground for house­hold and com­mer­cial waste. The col­lec­tion of waste in Ch­agua­nas is al­so a prob­lem in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

A dis­grun­tled res­i­dent of Bal­moral Park, Ed­in­burgh 500, said the open tray ser­vice op­er­at­ed by the CBC was not pick­ing up waste in his com­mu­ni­ty. He said a pile of tree cut­tings have now be­come a dump heap for house­hold waste.

Suruj Rambachan, right, along with workers he hired move garbage from Bhim Street, Chaguanas on Sunday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Ram­bachan said he was blanked on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions when he con­tact­ed May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed and the CEO of the CBC.

“The Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion has demon­strat­ed that it is an im­po­tent cor­po­ra­tion un­able to do a sim­ple task like clear­ing up this rub­bish. While the ver­min and rats con­tin­ue to cre­ate a health haz­ard here, they are hid­ing be­hind the lit­ter war­dens and they are hid­ing what they con­sid­er to be a le­gal process. The burgess­es are suf­fer­ing.”

Ram­bachan said, “When you put chil­dren to do a job this is what you got.” Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, MP for Ch­agua­nas West (Ram­bachan’s area falls in Cou­va North) said the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion was slow to re­move garbage and the prob­lem was grow­ing. Ram­bal­ly said the CBC was tak­ing too long to re­move garbage when they cleared drains. He said de­bris left on the side of the road usu­al­ly ends back up in the drains.

When con­tact­ed, May­or Mo­hammed said the is­sue was be­ing han­dled by the lit­ter war­den. Mo­hammed said, “The CBC re­mains com­mit­ted to keep­ing our area clean and san­i­tary. We con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the open tray ser­vice and reg­u­lar garbage dis­pos­al to en­sure that our Bor­ough is well kept.”