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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Grande residents still angry over step-down facility

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1781 days ago
20200406
Some of the angry residents of Bridge Road, Brooklyn Settlement, Sangre Grande, converge near the Aging At Home facility on Saturday. The venue is to be used to house recovering COVID-19 patients but residents are against this.

Some of the angry residents of Bridge Road, Brooklyn Settlement, Sangre Grande, converge near the Aging At Home facility on Saturday. The venue is to be used to house recovering COVID-19 patients but residents are against this.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

De­spite an ap­peal by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for un­der­stand­ing and tol­er­ance to­wards per­sons re­cov­er­ing from the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), res­i­dents of Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, re­mained adamant yes­ter­day that they do not want them in their com­mu­ni­ty.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, one woman, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, sug­gest­ed us­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s 72-room ho­tel in Cou­va to house re­cov­er­ing pa­tients, not­ing that venue re­mains un­opened.

“That fa­cil­i­ty is clos­er to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and it al­so has the iso­la­tion and acreage they need for these re­cov­er­ing pa­tients,” the woman said.

Re­fer­ring to the fa­cil­i­ty at Bridge Road where the min­istry pro­pos­es to house the pa­tients, she said it was not prop­er­ly se­cured, as the front wall is on­ly four feet high, the back of the prop­er­ty is un­fenced and on­ly a chain-link wire-fence sep­a­rates it from the near­est prop­er­ty which is me­tres away. She ac­cused the Min­istry of Health of fail­ing to car­ry out prop­er re­search be­fore de­ter­min­ing the suit­abil­i­ty of the venue as a step-down or hold­ing bay fa­cil­i­ty.

“Close to 70 per­sons live in­side here and close to that fa­cil­i­ty are el­der­ly peo­ple over the age of 65. They need­ed to do more re­search on the area’s pop­u­la­tion be­fore de­cid­ing it was a good place,” she said.

De­spite this, she ap­plaud­ed the ra­tio­nale be­hind set­ting up such fa­cil­i­ties.

“I have no is­sue with them need­ing to put the peo­ple some­where, I agree with it, but when you look at where the home is, it is mere me­tres away and not acreage as they are claim­ing. In­side Brook­lyn, the land is acreage but the hous­ing isn’t.”

She said this was why they took their con­cerns to San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am.

“We are not scorn­ing any­one but this is a scary sit­u­a­tion be­cause at that fa­cil­i­ty, the acreage is the emp­ty land to the back of the prop­er­ty with fruit trees. Every house is prob­a­bly on an acre and a half of land but be­tween house to house, it is not an acre that sep­a­rates them.”

She said they learned yes­ter­day that sol­diers, who have been at the fa­cil­i­ty since res­i­dents staged a fiery protest over the pro­pos­al, will be stay­ing at the Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. The sol­diers will be us­ing the cen­tre as a base for the du­ra­tion of the time they will be re­quired to guard the res­i­dents at the step-down fa­cil­i­ty. A sec­ond res­i­dent told Guardian Me­dia that al­though he was still up­set over the pro­posed move, he al­so recog­nised that the au­thor­i­ties will do what they want re­gard­less of how they feel.

One res­i­dent who on­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as Dark­man said, “It had more po­lice than cars up on this side. It’s a pa­trol every five min­utes but the area re­al qui­et.”

Pro­vid­ing a help­ing hand to his neigh­bour as he spoke with Guardian Me­dia, Dark­man added: “It’s not a mat­ter of dis­crim­i­na­tion but peo­ple are fright­ened, we don’t know what to ex­pect. No­body would want them be­ing moved in­to a house next to where they live so why they forc­ing us to ac­cept that?”

He said he will be keep­ing more to him­self now as a fur­ther pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure to en­sure he does not con­tract the virus.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, Juter­am, who has been op­er­at­ing as a con­duit be­tween the po­lice and res­i­dents to en­sure there is an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion, Juter­am said: “The man­ner in which things were done ini­tial­ly is what trau­ma­tised the res­i­dents. There was a clear breach of pro­to­cols where the peo­ple weren’t sen­si­tised.”

He said oth­er ques­tions were now be­ing asked, in­clud­ing whether or not the build­ing has the rel­e­vant ap­provals from the OSH Au­thor­i­ty, Fire Ser­vice and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

“My du­ty is not to come down on the vic­tims. I am very sym­pa­thet­ic to­wards them be­cause in the morn­ing…it could be my fa­ther or broth­er. This is a cri­sis the coun­try is fac­ing and I am a pa­tri­ot first and fore­most but I al­so un­der­stand the fears the res­i­dents are ex­press­ing,” Juter­am said.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed­ly on­ly learned of the move to re­lo­cate re­cov­er­ing pa­tients to a for­mer home for the aged around 5.30 pm Fri­day, when pam­phlets about the virus were hasti­ly dis­trib­uted by au­thor­i­ties.

Hours lat­er, a group of res­i­dents blocked Bridge Road with burn­ing de­bris to con­vey their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the de­ci­sion, claim­ing they had not been con­sult­ed. Po­lice and sol­diers were sent in on Sat­ur­day to keep the peace. (See Page 8)

COVID-19


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