Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj plans to ap­proach the 52 heads of state at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing for a do­na­tion to as­sist his con­stituen­cy. Ma­haraj made the com­ment as res­i­dents of Co­co­piece and Caratal Vil­lages in Gas­par­il­lo staged sep­a­rate protests over poor roads, lack of wa­ter, poor drainage, low volt­age elec­tric­i­ty and flood­ing. Cam­i­na Ja­malud­din, of Co­co­piece Trace, said for the past 23 years, more than 523 res­i­dents from the vil­lage had been suf­fer­ing be­cause of ir­reg­u­lar pipe-borne wa­ter. "Right now we get wa­ter once per week from 10.30 pm to 3.15 am...The wa­ter comes so slow that it don't reach in the tanks," she said.

"Most of us de­pend on the rain for wa­ter and some of us buy wa­ter." She al­so said that the road was de­plorable and there was no drainage. "We can't bathe reg­u­lar like most peo­ple...We get­ting wa­ter bills faster than we could get wa­ter and we see­ing too much trou­ble here," Ja­malud­din said. An­oth­er res­i­dent, Shameed Ali, said over the past few weeks res­i­dents had lost elec­tri­cal ap­pli­ances be­cause of low volt­age. He said elec­tric­i­ty was reg­u­lar­ly dis­rupt­ed in the area. "When we sit down to watch TV at 6 pm, the cur­rent shuts down and comes back up. All our TV, DVD and video spoil­ing be­cause of the low volt­age," Ali said.

He said poor drainage was a health haz­ard for the dozens of chil­dren who lived in Co­co­piece. "Dengue is go­ing around and we have stag­nat­ing wa­ter in the drains...We are tired of the prob­lems we have to face dai­ly in this area," Ali said. Ma­haraj, who joined the demon­stra­tors, said yes­ter­day that the prob­lems out­lined in Co­co­piece and Caratal were oc­cur­ring through­out his con­stituen­cy. "My con­stituents need re­lief...They do not have clean wa­ter to drink," he said. "At Caratal, the foun­da­tion of their hous­es are crum­bling be­cause of the bad state of the roads.

"The road is so bad that gabage trucks and taxis no longer go in there." He not­ed that he was doc­u­ment­ing all the prob­lems in his con­stituen­cy. "I plan to ap­proach each head of state at the in­ter­na­tion­al Com­mon­wealth con­fer­ence and ask them to give a do­na­tion to my con­stituen­cy," Ma­haraj said. "I will tell them that peo­ple do not even have drink­ing wa­ter, yet the Prime Min­is­ter is en­ter­tain­ing them on a yacht and giv­ing them cham­pagne." He al­so said he was mo­bil­is­ing to have protests in Port-of-Spain dur­ing the con­fer­ence.