Making Otaheite safer

THE EDITOR: Open letter to all stakeholders in the Otaheite (South Oropouche) area – Prime Minister Stuart Young, parliamentary representative for Fyzabad Dr Lackram Bodoe, councillor for Siparia West Javed Mohammed, companies with operations in the Otaheite area (eg Well Services Ltd, SM Jaleel and Co Ltd), vendors and fishermen in the area, residents and other interested parties I may have omitted.

My family (my wife Helen Persad and daughter Keara) have moved into a home on the seafront in the Otaheite area and are generally very happy there. But we note, especially after speaking with other residents of the area, that there are improvements that can be made in order to make our area safer and more enjoyable to live in, for example:

* There is a beach which is accessible from Rig Road and from our home which some residents use including us, but which is polluted with garbage, mainly plastic bottles and discarded food containers and other items. We did a clean-up several months ago but garbage has returned. Also, the access to the beach from Rig Road is overgrown, making access difficult from the south.

* Several other smaller beaches occur to the east as far as the fishing facility, which are overgrown and we assume, also polluted with garbage.

* There is a small river which passes by the SM Jaleel factory on its way to the sea, east of the fishing facility, which older residents say used to be pristine and teeming with fish, but is now black with non-oxygenated mud and silted up in many places and has not been dredged in years, maybe decades.

The above is a short list of problems in the area. We will continue to chat with residents and try to identify others.

We will try to remedy what we can and are going to engage all the stakeholders to assist in that remediation, and to identify those who may be in part responsible for creating the problems and encourage them also to desist from doing so and to assist.

In the interim we urge all stakeholders to do their part in cleaning up the area and making it safer for everyone.

DR KRISHNA PERSAD

energy consultant and Otaheite resident