RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The foun­tain at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts is sup­posed to be a thing of beau­ty.

In­stead, it has be­come an eye­sore and a health haz­ard.

When CNC3 News vis­it­ed the foun­tain on Wednes­day, thick chunks of moss float­ed on the foun­tain pool. De­cay­ing leaves and de­bris were seen at the bot­tom of the pool along with mos­qui­to lar­vae which were swim­ming in the stag­nat­ed wa­ter. All of the plumb­ing ap­peared to be bro­ken and clogged.

A source at SAPA said they have been wait­ing to have the foun­tain cleaned and re­paired for months.

"This is ter­ri­ble be­cause it af­fects not just the work­ers here but al­so the chil­dren from the sur­round­ing schools be­cause it is breed­ing mos­qui­toes," the source said.

Main­te­nance of the fa­cil­i­ty falls un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT). The Acad­e­my hosts aer­o­bics class­es every day. Events in­clud­ing fash­ion shows, cul­tur­al per­for­mances, beau­ty pageants and com­e­dy shows are al­so held at the fa­cil­i­ty.

The source said re­ports have been made to UDE­COTT's Fa­cil­i­ties Di­vi­sion as well as the Min­istry of Tourism.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on the con­di­tion at SAPA's foun­tain, chair­man of Ude­cott Noel Gar­cia said that based on cor­re­spon­dence from UDE­COTT's Fa­cil­i­ties Di­vi­sion, he was in­formed that the prob­lems with the foun­tain were raised by the Tourism min­istry ear­li­er this week.

Gar­cia said Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group has the con­tract for the main­te­nance of the foun­tain. SCG was asked to clean it and pro­vide a price to make it func­tion­al again, Gar­cia added.

In say­ing he in­tends to take a per­son­al in­ter­est in this mat­ter, Gar­cia gave the as­sur­ance that the mat­ter will be ad­dressed.

On Mon­day dur­ing the open­ing of Skin­ner Park, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so lament­ed the poor main­te­nance of fa­cil­i­ties. Con­cern­ing Skin­ner Park, Dr Row­ley ex­pressed hope that once the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form comes on­stream, the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion will be in charge of main­tain­ing all its fa­cil­i­ties un­der its purview in­clud­ing Skin­ner Park.

But San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al Rawi told CNC3 News that in the mean­time, a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing will be signed be­tween the SFCC and UDE­COTT for the main­te­nance of Skin­ner Park.