Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Clax­ton Bay res­i­dents are plan­ning to start a pe­ti­tion to take to the Gov­ern­ment call­ing for the For­res Park dump to be re­lo­cat­ed.

Yes­ter­day, smog from an on­go­ing fire at the dump caused the prin­ci­pal of the Spring­valle Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School to send home some 200 stu­dents.

Bush fires ig­nit­ed the dump late on Mon­day.

Ash­meed Ghany, who lives op­po­site the school, had to use a neb­u­liz­er as he was un­able to breathe prop­er­ly on Mon­day night and ear­ly yes­ter­day. Ghany, 51, suf­fers from Car­dio­genic Pul­monary Ede­ma, a con­di­tion where wa­ter gath­ers in the lungs.

He has lived his whole life in Clax­ton Bay and, now that he is ail­ing, he wants the Gov­ern­ment to step in and re­lieve the hard­ships faced by the res­i­dents.

"This is a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in Clax­ton Bay. Every year dur­ing the dry sea­son some­one lights the dump afire and we are left to suf­fer," Ghany said.

"We have been call­ing on suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments for years and years to step in and move the dump and no­body has done any­thing."

Dur­ing an in­ter­view at his home yes­ter­day, Ghany be­gan gasp­ing and his wife, Sher­if­fa, rushed to bring him the neb­u­liz­er to al­low him to breathe.

Ghany said he had a pace­mak­er in­stalled af­ter he suf­fered a ma­jor heart at­tack last year.

"My health is not good any­more, I fall sick reg­u­lar­ly and this sit­u­a­tion makes it so much worse."

Sher­if­fa, 44, said she in­tends to start a pe­ti­tion to take through­out the area.

"We have to do some­thing and if we de­cide to protest, the ques­tion is how many peo­ple will be well enough to come out...there are so many cas­es of asth­ma and breath­ing prob­lems in Clax­ton Bay."

Sher­if­fa said res­i­dents are af­fect­ed by the stench of the land­fill in the rainy sea­son.

"When it's dry sea­son, it's the smoke. In the wet sea­son, it's the stench. It gets re­al­ly un­bear­able and we have to face the full brunt of it."

She said her goal is to col­lect 1,000 sig­na­tures to take to Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley.

"I want them to know how many peo­ple, how many chil­dren, el­der­ly, sick peo­ple are af­fect­ed by this prob­lem."

Alan Marchan, who was called in to pick up his step-daugh­ter Aaliyah Is­sac from class­es at Spring­valle Hin­du, echoed the calls of the Ghanys.

"They need to do some­thing about this dump, there are dozens of chil­dren who fall ill every year be­cause of the smoke and smog," Marchan said.

Six-year-old Aaliyah was sup­posed to sit end-of-term math­e­mat­ics ex­ams yes­ter­day.

While she was ex­cit­ed about hav­ing the day off, she said some of her class­mates had com­plained of feel­ing un­well be­fore class­es were dis­missed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Ra­jesh Soon­dar, told the T&T Guardian that if Gov­ern­ment does noth­ing about the dump, the res­i­dents will protest.

"We com­plain­ing for years and no­body tak­ing us on. We will start to protest and block roads and maybe then they will hear us," Soon­dar said.

A state­ment from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL), which man­ages the dump, said yes­ter­day the fire at the north­east­ern side of the For­res Park land­fill had been "sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tained" and ef­forts are be­ing made to ex­tin­guish it.