RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Teach­ers at Cara­pichaima West Sec­ondary left class­es at noon yes­ter­day as a high mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion forced stu­dents to write their ex­am­i­na­tions out­side their class­rooms.

This comes af­ter a teacher con­tract­ed dengue fever two weeks ago.

An of­fi­cial at the school, who asked not to be named, said teams from the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment vis­it­ed on Tues­day morn­ing and found lar­vae of the Aedes Egyp­ti mos­qui­to near the Agri­cul­tur­al De­part­ment.

Stag­nant wa­ter, where mos­qui­toes breed, was al­so dis­cov­ered in­side the con­struc­tion site where the new Cara­pichaima West Sec­ondary School is be­ing built near­by. That con­struc­tion start­ed 15 years ago but re­mains in­com­plete. The of­fi­cial said the mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion was over­whelm­ing.

“Chil­dren can­not stay in their class­rooms, and every­one had to write their ex­am­i­na­tions out­side in an open area.”

Re­ports were made to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry and the Min­istry of Health, but up to yes­ter­day, the of­fi­cial claimed, noth­ing was done.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school, staff mem­bers were in a meet­ing.

Mean­while, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin called for ur­gent ac­tion.

“TTUTA is aware of the chal­lenges our mem­bers face at Cara­pichaima West Sec­ondary School. The ris­ing num­ber of dengue fever cas­es through­out T&T, es­pe­cial­ly in Coun­ty Ca­roni, is a con­cern to the As­so­ci­a­tion,” Lum Kin said.

He added: “TTUTA urges ad­min­is­tra­tors to fol­low the guide­lines set out by the min­istry for the pre­ven­tion and erad­i­ca­tion of breed­ing grounds for the Aedes Egyp­ti mos­qui­toes. We are call­ing on the Min­istry of Health to en­sure that spray­ing of school com­pounds is a pri­or­i­ty at this time. With one and a half weeks be­fore the close of the term, TTUTA be­lieves spray­ing should be done im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros and Deputy May­or of Siparia Shankar Teelucks­ingh al­so called for spray­ing in his re­gion. He claimed nine new dengue cas­es had been iden­ti­fied and a lack of re­sources was caus­ing is­sues.

“We are fac­ing chal­lenges in Ica­cos, Bonasse, Granville, and Bam­boo ar­eas. There are high lev­els of mos­qui­to breed­ing in the dis­trict. At the bor­ough, I have been lob­by­ing for per­i­fo­cal work to be done, but due to equip­ment short­ages at the In­sect Vec­tor De­part­ment, we face se­ri­ous chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly with the short­age of Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment,” Teelucks­ingh claimed.

De­spite the set­backs, he said the work­ers were ready to go out but need­ed equip­ment.

“The In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol De­part­ment ve­hi­cles are non-func­tion­al, and they have not re­spond­ed to of­fers for as­sis­tance with ve­hi­cles from us. Some work­ers are us­ing per­son­al ve­hi­cles to do the job. The dy­na-fog­ging team is not out be­cause they lack PPE. We need to keep the num­bers down by spray­ing the mos­qui­toes,” Teelucks­ingh al­leged.

He called on the gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene and pro­vide the re­sources for work­ers.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for a com­ment, but up to last evening, there was no re­sponse. Last week Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said over spray­ing takes a toll on the well­be­ing of an­i­mals and peo­ple.

“When we over­spray the mos­qui­toes build up re­sis­tance and hu­man and an­i­mal health are af­fect­ed be­cause you are ex­posed to spray­ing too of­ten,” Deyals­ingh said.

He urged house­hold­ers to ex­er­cise per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by re­mov­ing saucers, vas­es and clogged gut­ter­ing where the mos­qui­toes can breed. He said all wa­ter tanks should be prop­er­ly cov­ered.