Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Traf­fic woes and drainage prob­lems fac­ing res­i­dents of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment No 2, Val­sayn, were among the is­sues Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning has agreed to tack­le. She not­ed de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties in the area had out­paced ca­pac­i­ties to re­spond to its changes. "You are liv­ing on lands de­signed for agri­cul­ture. You are not liv­ing in an area de­signed for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty or res­i­den­tial use," she told res­i­dents at a town meet­ing of their com­mu­ni­ty at the Bam­boo Gov­ern­ment School on Wednes­day. Man­ning made sev­er­al pub­lic of­fi­cials ac­count to the gath­er­ing af­ter res­i­dents raised con­cerns about de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems in the area.

The pub­lic of­fi­cials in­clud­ed chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Pa­tri­cia Mejias, who was re­quired to give an ex­pla­na­tion for the area's un­clogged drains, which were breed­ing grounds for mos­qui­toes. Mejias said me­chan­i­cal equip­ment was need­ed to clean the drains and that it was ex­pen­sive. An­oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cial, pub­lic health in­spec­tor Tere­sa Tsoi-a-Fatt, was asked to ex­plain the Min­istry of Health's fail­ure to serve a clean-up no­tice to the own­er of two acres of land along Per­sad Street, which was con­vert­ed in­to a dump for dis­card­ed used car parts. Tsoi-a-Fatt said as­sis­tance was need­ed to iden­ti­fy and lo­cate the land's own­er be­fore the clean-up no­tice could be served. Af­ter the two-hour meet­ing end­ed, Man­ning was able to achieve four so­lu­tions to the five main is­sues raised by the res­i­dents.