The beau­ty of Palmiste Park has been taint­ed by ef­flu­ent from near­by food huts which emits a foul odour and pos­es a grave health haz­ard to park users.

For years, waste gen­er­at­ed from on-site kitchens has been freely flow­ing be­hind the huts un­to the lay-by of Son­ny Ra­madin Dri­ve.

On Tues­day, jog­gers, res­i­dents, and fit­ness en­thu­si­asts joined with the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety (PHS) to launch a pe­ti­tion. PHS pres­i­dent Ter­rence Hon­ore said the pe­ti­tion is aimed at forc­ing the au­thor­i­ties to prompt­ly ad­dress the health haz­ard and safe­guard the park’s nat­ur­al beau­ty.

Ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion over their pre­vi­ous at­tempts to seek as­sis­tance from var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies, Hon­ore said the pe­ti­tion was their last re­sort.

“Over the past few years we have writ­ten to every­body, in­clud­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), the Pub­lic Health Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health, the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Min­is­ter Don­na Cox who is Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment,” he said.

How­ev­er, their ap­peals for in­stal­la­tion of a sump with prop­er waste dis­pos­al drainage went unan­swered. Hon­ore said the huts were orig­i­nal­ly as­signed for veg­etable and dry goods stalls.

“Even­tu­al­ly peo­ple start­ed to cook on site which caused all the waste­water to flow in­to the road. It is dam­ag­ing the road­way and we now have to smell this odour. It is most un­for­tu­nate and we are ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to treat this as ur­gent,” he said.

Hon­ore said the Rapid Fire Kids Foun­da­tion play­park was al­so af­fect­ed and he ex­pressed con­cern that chil­dren can be­come in­fect­ed by the bac­te­ria and con­t­a­m­i­nants from the waste­water.

“The play­ground is a few me­tres down the hill and this is com­pound­ed as the waste­water flows in­to the pond and af­fects the ecol­o­gy of this area,” he said.

Res­i­dent Christo­pher Cabral said he al­so tried to have the prob­lem rec­ti­fied with no suc­cess.

“This place is stink. I have been be­hind every­body to try and clean up this place. But PDRC (Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion) on­ly has ex­cus­es say­ing they don’t have mon­ey, and it’s not their du­ty. But this is a sim­ple thing to fix. All we need is a sump to col­lect the im­pu­ri­ties, old oil and stale food,” he said.

Yo­ga teacher Sais Ma­haraj al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment.

“This place smells aw­ful, it looks aw­ful. It’s dis­gust­ing. The play park is right there and every day we have lots of chil­dren com­ing there. Every year we have yag­nas in the park as well and peo­ple have to cross this filth to get there,” she lament­ed.

Pun­dit Surindra Ma­haraj agreed that the prob­lems have been fes­ter­ing for too long.

“Who­ev­er is in charge, whichev­er of­fice that is re­spon­si­ble for the park, we want help. We are call­ing for the Palmiste Na­tion­al Park to be the botan­ic gar­dens of the south. This area should be giv­en equal at­ten­tion be­cause it’s used by thou­sands of peo­ple,” he said.

One of the food hut op­er­a­tors Ri­an­na Jim said they are will­ing to help fi­nan­cial­ly to cor­rect the prob­lem but need au­tho­ri­sa­tion first.

PDRC chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said they have been try­ing to get ju­ris­dic­tion over the huts and lay­by from the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry since 2013. As proof he showed a let­ter dat­ed March 10 ask­ing for ju­ris­dic­tion over the park, lay-by and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties.
Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al Rawi promised to look in­to the mat­ter and then give a re­sponse.