Kali­fa Clyne

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh yes­ter­day ex­pressed fear that his body would not be able to sus­tain it­self un­til the re­turn of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to T&T.Kublals­ingh said he felt weak and dizzy on the eight day of his sec­ond hunger strike over the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the $7.5 bil­lion high­way ex­ten­sion.The ac­tivist re­quest­ed a meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar in New York ear­li­er this week but did not re­ceive any re­sponse from the Gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is in New York at­tend­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion's 69th Gen­er­al As­sem­bly meet­ing in Man­hat­tan. She is ex­pect­ed back home some­time next week.Kublals­ingh said: "I feel pret­ty weak, I don't know if I can go be­yond the week­end."I am get­ting some dizzy spells. Some­times my heart starts rac­ing. i get very de­hy­drat­ed. That's the sit­u­a­tion with my body. I will see how it goes over the week­end,"Kublals­ingh yes­ter­day re­sumed his post out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, af­ter spend­ing the hol­i­day rest­ing, while oth­er mem­bers of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment, led by Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah showed the me­dia a new pro­pos­al for a high­way route through the Mon De­sir area.He re­clined on a chair, an um­brel­la pro­tect­ing him from the sun, while a woman cooled his skin with a wet cloth.He ap­peared weak and spoke slow­ly through chapped lips.

De­spite fears his body would not be able to sus­tain his hunger strike, Kubals­ingh said he had no in­ten­tion of quit­ting."There is no stop­ping this. We have to go through. The on­ly thing that can stop it, of course, is if my body re­lents. If my body re­lents I ob­vi­ous­ly would have no con­trol. I don't know what the State would do or what my rel­a­tives would do. I have not made any arrange­ments," he added.He said the on­ly thing that would stop his strike, oth­er than his body re­lent­ing, would be if Per­sad-Bisses­sar put the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way on hold and re­view the high­way and, as part of the process, re­view a new pro­pos­al.

He said the pur­pose of his re­quest to vis­it Per­sad-Bisses­sar in New York was to show her the new pro­pos­al."She is busy. I saw her pic­ture in the pa­per this morn­ing and she is on Wall Street and she ap­pears to be very pre­oc­cu­pied so that's fine, no prob­lem," Kublals­ingh said.He said the new pro­pos­al was a beau­ti­ful so­lu­tion which would save the Trea­sury over a bil­lion dol­lars and would save parts of the Oropouche la­goon."It is the op­ti­mal tech­ni­cal so­lu­tion and it dove­tails with Gov­ern­ment's own plans," he said.Gov­ern­ment has not re­spond­ed to the new pro­pos­al by the HRM.

201 days of Vig­il

Kublals­ingh said yes­ter­day marked 201 days of his vig­il out­side of the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice and ded­i­cat­ed the day to in­mates at the de­ten­tion cen­tre who he in­ter­act­ed with reg­u­lar­ly."The name Re­mand Yard is a mis­nomer. They are liv­ing in a hell hole. There are young men, women and el­der­ly peo­ple there and they go to the mag­is­trates and they don't have a lawyer and the mag­is­trate says come back in four months."It's abysmal, this kind of suf­fer­ing they are go­ing through. This re­quires the in­ter­ven­tion of the Gov­ern­ment."I ad­mit that some of them are kind of stu­pid fel­las and dotish fel­las and they have a piece of weed but they re­quire jus­tice as any­body else," The ac­tivist said.