Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Ica­cos are call­ing for ur­gent mos­qui­to con­trol mea­sures as swarms of mos­qui­toes con­tin­ue to af­fect dai­ly life in the south­west­ern penin­su­la.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Ica­cos res­i­dent Al­fred John Williams said the in­crease is typ­i­cal dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

“Once you go in the bush, you’ll get mos­qui­toes. All my 75 years of age, I’ve been in that,” Williams said.

He added that res­i­dents have been us­ing smoke to keep mos­qui­toes away but with lim­it­ed suc­cess.

“We have to smoke out the house. Spray­ing does not al­ways work. Some­times they spray and next hour we get mos­qui­toes again,” he said.

Al­though there has been no re­port­ed spike in mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness­es, Williams al­so called for longer open­ing hours at the Ce­dros and Ica­cos health cen­tres.

Over at Gran Chemin Road, Ica­cos, res­i­dent Cal­lis­ton Grant de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as on­go­ing.

“For a cou­ple of years, the mos­qui­toes have been af­fect­ing us. When the rain falls, the mos­qui­toes hatch,” Grant said.

He be­lieves the wind car­ries the mos­qui­toes from oth­er ar­eas.

“It comes from across on an­oth­er side. You know, the breeze just blows it.”

Grant said there are var­i­ous types of mos­qui­toes af­fect­ing res­i­dents, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren.

“It has all dif­fer­ent species of mos­qui­toes and it makes the chil­dren sick,” he claimed.

Call­ing for tar­get­ed ac­tion, he added, “They need to go 10 feet up in the bush and spray. That could help.”

He showed bite marks on his hand and said while some peo­ple use re­pel­lent, many sim­ply stay in­doors af­ter dark.

In Fullar­ton, res­i­dent Steve Coop­er al­so called for in­creased spray­ing ef­forts.

“We have lots of ar­eas where the mos­qui­toes breed and these are the ar­eas they have to spray with Malathion. That is the on­ly way to stop the mos­qui­toes from breed­ing,” he said.

Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh con­firmed the re­ports of a mos­qui­to in­crease in Ce­dros, Ica­cos, Fullar­ton, and Bonasse.

“This is the time when the rainy sea­son starts, you have an in­flux of mos­qui­toes,” he said.

How­ev­er, Teelucks­ingh said both the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Health are tak­ing ac­tion.

“They are putting things in place to have the area sprayed and to at least treat the stag­nant wa­ter with­in the aban­doned co­conut es­tates and so on,” he said.

He ex­plained that mon­i­tor­ing of breed­ing sites is al­so on­go­ing.

Ef­forts are al­so be­ing made to im­prove health­care ser­vices in the re­gion.

“We al­ready have dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of Health… to ex­pand with the pub­lic health space that we have… to ac­com­mo­date some of the ba­sic health care,” he said.

While no cas­es of mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease have been con­firmed, of­fi­cials and res­i­dents con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia has reached out to Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe but had not re­ceived a re­sponse up to press time.