Fed up of the stench over­whelm­ing their com­mu­ni­ties, res­i­dents of Tor­tu­ga and Clax­ton Bay staged a plac­ard protest on Fri­day call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to close off the back en­trance of the For­res Park land­fill.

Chant­i­ng "Clean the dump now," res­i­dent De­bra De­boulet said a gaseous sub­stance was now bub­bling up from the ground near the dump.

"It is like a thick juice flow­ing down from the back en­trance. Peo­ple are wor­ried that this could be a poi­so­nous gas. There is al­so nails, chick­en guts and oth­er de­bris piled in a heap out­side the back en­trance," De­boulet said.

She ex­plained that many res­i­dents were al­so now fear­ful of pass­ing along the Tor­tu­ga Road in case they are robbed by in­hab­i­tants of the dump.

"Peo­ple live and work in the dump. There is a shop in­side there sell­ing sweet drink and cou­ples who live there. We have heard of re­ports of peo­ple be­ing robbed here and with the de­bris on the road, it is easy for peo­ple to get a flat tyre," she added.

Res­i­dent Mahin­dra Ramharack said the beau­ty of the Cen­tral Range was be­ing spoiled by the dump­ing of rub­bish along the Tor­tu­ga Road.

"Part of the road is cav­ing high­er up the road. Peo­ple are us­ing this scenic area to dump tyres and garbage. The whole place stinks. The near­est house is a mile away and we still get the smell from the dump," he said.

He al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to set up a wall to pre­vent ac­cess to the dump as well as reg­u­lar pa­trols to pre­vent dump­ing.

"We need lit­ter war­dens here or po­lice. Every time the area is cleaned peo­ple come and dump," he said, point­ing to de­bris from a con­struc­tion site.

He al­so said food out­lets bring kegs of used oil and oth­er house­hold garbage and dumped it out­side the land­fill.

"Poul­try shops drop bags of chick­en guts and this is a health haz­ard to the peo­ple of Tor­tu­ga," Ramharack said.

He said last week he went in­to the drain and took out 20-plus tyres which were dumped.

"Tyre shop op­er­a­tors come here and dump. It is a dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tion," he said.

Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed CEO Ronald Roach was not in of­fice to com­ment on the is­sue. An of­fi­cial from the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment re­ferred ques­tions to the unit's man­ag­er Wes­ley George but when con­tact­ed he di­rect­ed ques­tions to gen­er­al man­ag­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tions sales and mar­ket­ing David Man­swell, who did not re­spond to calls.

Guardian Me­dia will bring you more as this sto­ry un­folds.