It was really bad. That was how site manager of Garbage Management Inc., Kurleigh Blackett, described the state of the Halls Road canal inSt Michael on Saturday.
His company was called in by the Barbados Labour Party’s St Michael South Central candidate Marsha Caddle and the branch to bring order to the overgrown, mosquito-breeding canal that was proving to be a headache for residents of the surrounding districts.
As an excavator cleared the canal and removed the dense bush which had taken over the area in the wake of recent rains, Blackett said his company was called in to clean the stretch after numerous complaints from residents about mosquitoes and rat infestations.
“It’s really bad. It’s bad. The first thing we did was we tried to clear the water from the bridge. It was stuck there, so we cleared all that debris. So we are just going to debush as far as we can so we can have it level to stop the mosquitoes,” he told the DAILY NATION. “We are going to see what impact we can make and then we will go from there.”
He noted the water in the canal had become stagnant and needed “a natural flow coming from the bridge” to push it to the Constitution River.
Janelle King, of Chase Gap, Halls Road, said it would be “good that the bush would (be kept) clear so that the children would not get dengue or contract leptospirosis”.
She recalled that there had been times when the bush was as tall as the retaining walls of the canal, “that you couldn’t even see from the top to the bottom.
“We hope it would keep as low as possible. This is just a start,” she added. (HLE)
