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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Moruga residents protest over dust woes, lack of water

by

Sascha Wilson
804 days ago
20221212

As she cov­ered her nose with her hand in her gallery over­look­ing the Moru­ga Road yes­ter­day, 82-year-old Joyce Woods blamed her hoarse voice on the dust in the at­mos­phere.

“It af­fect­ing me very bad, you hear how I talk­ing, the cold not go­ing at all. We eat­ing dust, we drink­ing dust. They not fix­ing the road at all, at all,” com­plained Woods.

From as ear­ly as 6 am, res­i­dents be­gan burn­ing tyres and de­bris along the Moru­ga Road, In­di­an Walk, near the 3rd Com­pa­ny Road, in protest over the dust prob­lems and lack of pipe-borne wa­ter.

The res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that about six months ago, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port fixed a land­slip on the road and about a month ago a drain was built, but the road was not paved.

To make mat­ters worse, they said for the past two months, they have been get­ting an ir­reg­u­lar pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply.

The last time they got wa­ter, Woods said, was two weeks ago.

“For Di­vali, yes we had wa­ter and as Di­vali done, like Chris­tians don’t want wa­ter, we don’t have to clean. If we do get, it is one, 12 (mid­night) and when you wake 6 o’clock wa­ter gone, no wa­ter. Right now, the pipe dry.”

She said last week they re­quest­ed and re­ceived a truck-borne sup­ply of wa­ter from WASA.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Ken­nisha El­liot, said el­der­ly peo­ple and chil­dren were get­ting sick as a re­sult of the dust prob­lem.

“The dust is killing them. The chil­dren can­not come out to play be­cause it is too much dust,” she lament­ed.

She said they can­not even clean for Christ­mas be­cause of the amount of dust they are faced with on a dai­ly ba­sis.

“They patch-up here (the road) and leave it so. When cars pass­ing, they stick­ing, they scrap­ing, is too much.

“We need to get the road fixed. Al­so, we hard­ly have wa­ter in the area. They need to do some­thing about this,” she lament­ed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Leeann Woods com­plained, “If the sun shine is dust, all on the ta­ble, all in­side. I can­not clean up for the Christ­mas. Not on­ly me, res­i­dents in the area. They need to do some­thing about this.”

She said there were two asth­mat­ic chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty and her son was al­so af­fect­ed.

“My son was home for two weeks with the cold be­cause of this dust. I have a ten-month-old nephew,” she com­plained.

Leeann said res­i­dents will con­tin­ue to protest un­til their is­sues are ad­dressed.

A mo­torist who was dri­ving past dur­ing the protest sup­port­ed the res­i­dents. He said the road was dam­ag­ing his ve­hi­cle.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin said based on what was told to her, a short­age of bi­tu­men seemed to be one of the rea­sons that the road had not been paved.

How­ev­er, she said, the lack of wa­ter was an is­sue through­out the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing oth­er ar­eas in Moru­ga, Hin­dus­tan and Bar­rack­pore.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the min­istry and WASA for com­ment but up to last evening, none was re­ceived.


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