Shas­tri Boodan

May­or of Ch­agua­nas Or­lan­do Nages­sar is mov­ing full speed ahead to deal with a rise in dengue cas­es in the busy cen­tral bor­ough.

Nages­sar told the T&T Guardian that he was in­formed by Dr Venkatara­man Bal­aset­ti, the bor­ough's Chief Med­ical and Health Of­fi­cer, that ten cas­es were re­port­ed yes­ter­day. The may­or said he vis­it­ed four peo­ple with dengue at Lyle Lane, Fe­lic­i­ty, yes­ter­day. He said cas­es had al­so been re­port­ed in Long­denville and En­ter­prise. Nages­sar said he would be tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure the af­fect­ed ar­eas were sprayed. He added that the bor­ough had its own ve­hi­cle-mount­ed spray­ing ma­chine. Bal­aset­ti said homes would be in­spect­ed for the dengue-car­ry­ing aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to and in­ten­sive spray­ing would be car­ried out where cas­es had been iden­ti­fied.

Nages­sar said flood­ing and aban­doned lots were prov­ing a prob­lem in the bor­ough. He dis­closed that there were more than 100 aban­doned lots over­grown with bush­es and de­bris. He added that these lots were breed­ing grounds for mos­qui­toes, rats and oth­er ver­min. Nages­sar said what was more up­set­ting was the fact that sev­er­al promi­nent busi­ness peo­ple owned these lots. He added they they had un­til Sep­tem­ber 10 to clean up the lots. He said fail­ure to do so would mean that the bor­ough would en­force its by-laws and clean the lots, and charge the own­ers.

Nages­sar said flood wa­ters that re­mained stag­nant were breed­ing grounds for mos­qui­toes. He said il­le­gal con­struc­tion of bridges, blocked wa­ter­ways, il­le­gal fenc­ing, derelict ve­hi­cles on the road­ways and aban­doned build­ings would be dealt with next week. Nages­sar said he met with res­i­dents of Clark Road, Char­lieville, yes­ter­day, who were con­cerned about the heavy flood­ing in the area. He said the land de­vel­op­ment projects un­der­tak­en by the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Co (EM­BD) should be re­viewed. He said the EM­BD con­trac­tors had blocked the var­i­ous wa­ter chan­nels with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of the af­ter ef­fects. Nages­sar re­ceived a warm wel­come from Bor­ough work­ers.

He was in­stalled on Mon­day, the pho­to of for­mer may­or Natasha Navas had al­ready been re­moved from the bor­ough hall by 8 am and placed next to that of Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, the man she re­placed as may­or. Coun­cil­lor for Char­lieville Fal­isha Isa­hak ripped down a sign from the may­or's of­fice that in­di­cat­ed Navas was the may­or, as she en­tered a cau­cus meet­ing. Isa­hak crum­pled the lam­i­nat­ed piece of pa­per and threw it in­to a bin. Bor­ough work­ers said they were glad that Nages­sar was back, since he was an ap­proach­able per­son.