Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of the Corinth Hills Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion com­mu­ni­ty in Ste Madeleine yes­ter­day com­plained about de­te­ri­o­rat­ing liv­ing con­di­tions as a re­sult of ir­reg­u­lar garbage col­lec­tion, over­grown grass and pest in­fes­ta­tions.

The com­plaints sur­faced one day af­ter San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning raised con­cerns in Par­lia­ment, claim­ing that sev­er­al HDC com­mu­ni­ties with­in his con­stituen­cy were not be­ing prop­er­ly main­tained, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to garbage col­lec­tion, grass cut­ting and drain clean­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, res­i­dents com­plained that they felt ne­glect­ed and over­whelmed by the con­di­tions in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Some said they have been forced to pay to cut the grass around their build­ings, while oth­ers have re­sort­ed to cut­ting it them­selves.

Res­i­dent Aaron Greenidge said he has been try­ing to main­tain the grass in and around his com­mu­ni­ty.

“We get ne­glect­ed here. No­body is say­ing noth­ing. It’s like it’s a po­lit­i­cal thing. They say it’s a PNM place, but it’s not. It’s a com­mu­ni­ty first,” he said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty com­plained that garbage col­lec­tion would not al­ways oc­cur on the sched­uled days, and some­times garbage is col­lect­ed on­ly once a week.

“The place is nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty. Rats, grass, rub­bish. No help at all. No coun­sel­lor at all. HDC not even com­ing to fix noth­ing and all. The build­ings have fall­en apart. The tiles rais­ing up in peo­ple’s house,” he com­plained.

He said the com­mu­ni­ty needs at­ten­tion.

“We need help. We be­hind God back here,” he said.

Re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer, Patrick Louis, 64, who lives in an apart­ment on the top floor of Build­ing 13, said over the years he has made nu­mer­ous com­plaints to HDC about his liv­ing con­di­tions, but has yet to see any im­prove­ment.

Point­ing to gap­ing spaces in the ceil­ing where the gyp­sum tiles are miss­ing, he lament­ed, “My prob­lem is in­sect, pi­geon in my ceil­ing. Those win­dows falling apart, if I push them win­dows too hard, they fall down. You know what it is, get­ting up 4 o’clock in the morn­ing, in­sects com­ing from the ceil­ing and drop­ping on your bed; can’t sleep com­fort­able.”

He said pi­geon drop­pings were scat­tered through­out his apart­ment, in­clud­ing on his cur­tains. Louis added that the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened be­cause the apart­ment next to his has been aban­doned.

Con­cerned about his health and safe­ty, he is ap­peal­ing to HDC to car­ry out re­pairs to his apart­ment.

Re­spond­ing in Par­lia­ment to the con­cerns raised by Man­ning, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee de­fend­ed the HDC, stat­ing that garbage col­lec­tion and bulk waste re­moval ex­er­cis­es were be­ing car­ried out in sev­er­al HDC com­mu­ni­ties with­in Man­ning’s con­stituen­cy.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the com­plaints from Corinth Hills res­i­dents, Lee said he doesn’t in­volve him­self with those is­sues and re­ferred ques­tions to HDC man­age­ment. At­tempts to ob­tain a re­sponse from HDC were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day.