More than 600 truckloads of garbage have been removed from homes within the Couva/ Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation within the past three weeks in its bid to reduce mosquito breeding areas and prevent the spread of the Zika virus.
Even though health authorities have admitted thousands of people have been infected with the virus, people are not taking the personal responsibility to clean around their homes and communities.
This was evident during Tabaquite MP Dr Surujrattan Rambachan’s tour of Guaracara yesterday. Some homes still have overgrown bushes, receptacles for water and several other public health violations that created breeding grounds for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.
Within an hour of health control officers and litter wardens visiting homes, several people were warned about their premises and one person was served with a notice. Corporation chairman Henry Awong told the T&T Guardian over 500 residents were served with notices for violating the public health ordinances.
He said when public health officers visited two weeks later and there was a 60 per cent compliance rate of people addressing the violations while 40 per cent were tardy. At least three people have been fined $500 for unkept property. That fine has since been increased to $3,500.
For abandoned properties, he said, the corporations would clean it once while the owners were tracked down and billed for the job.
Although all regional corporations received $500,000 towards source reduction activities, Awong said it was not enough over a long period.
Rambachan said he was surprised how some people kept their premises. He said people were under-educated about the causes and effects of the Zika virus and the issue of microcephaly, a medical condition that results in birth defects.
For that reason, he said, he would be forming neighbourhood Zika watch groups, led by responsible people in the community. He said those groups would be responsible for immediately identifying potential mosquito breeding grounds and help educate their neighbours.
“I believe too many people in our country are not serious about cleaning up and perhaps they do not understand the wider implications and dangerous outcomes of being subjected to the Zika virus.
“The idea of having a child with microcephaly in your house is not something to be welcomed at all. Across the world we are seeing the difficulties parents are faced with in having to manage for a lifetime, children born with microcephaly,” Rambachan added.
He said his office called the Ministry of Health yesterday morning, requesting educational pamphlets on the Zika virus so they could be distributed through the constituency. However, he said, they were told that the ministry was out of pamphlets and the staff there was unsure when new ones would be printed.
“I believe nationally, more can be done about the education. I think that the educational efforts of the Ministry of Health are too sparse and too thin. When you get a response like that, it means to say they are not aware themselves about the extent to which there is under-education of the problem and we are seeing it,” Rambachan said.