All hands needed for dengue fight

They know these insects thrive in overgrown and unkempt conditions. They know poorly disposed litter cans serve as water receptacles or can collect in running watercourses forming dams along both natural and man-made waterways. They know all this, still they litter and tolerate garbage buildup in private and public watercourses.

By simply cooperating in cleaning all water courses on a fixed schedule, year round, the annual dengue surge would be one less problem to contend with. But no. Everybody is fixated with thinking it is undignified to clean and discard refuse properly. Guess what? It’s undignified to litter. Guess what? It’s undignified to tolerate filth. It’s undignified to think you are too high, too wonderful, too sexy, too smart, too classy, too educated, too tall, too popular, too politically connected, too busy, too squeamish, too filled with false pride to help keep the nation — your nation clean.

It’s undignified to believe that just because you pay taxes this exempts you from disposing your garbage properly. Being wonderful, sexy, smart, religious, pink, blue, affable, pugnacious, priggish or rich doesn’t give you the right to leave your filth laying around for CEPEP and URP workers to clean up your mess, which creates breeding habitats for dengue mosquitoes.

It’s dumb to watch the deadly dengue mosquitoes grow in number and say, “not my problem, that is vector control’s, CEPEP and URP’s work. It’s the government’s fault people get infected and die of dengue.” Did the government seize your refuse and indiscriminately discard it so clogging up waterways? Did government prohibit you from removing vegetative growth from natural or man-made watercourses? Oh please, grow up and accept some responsibility! Rest the yore political blame game. Be it PP, UNC, PNM or NAR reining in government people die of complications of dengue because the wider able-bodied society waits around for government to hire people to do what they can easily do for themselves.

People of TT are too tolerant of filth. They litter, people afar off and near to their hearts get sick and die, then they want to point fingers. Oh it’s the government’s fault. Blame who you like. It’s your fault if dengue mosquito species (black and silver) are in your home because they are breeding in the stagnant public drain in front your home teeming with overgrowth you won’t remove. Or in stagnant water held in containers, tyres, unfilled holes, your clogged guttering that you won’t remedy.

You select to wait on CEPEP, URP or the insect vector control personnel to address the problem. In your idle wait dengue infects you or your loved ones or strangers. These infections are your fault. Trinis aren’t ignorant that they shouldn’t litter. Nor are they ignorant about the connection between stagnant water and mosquitoes. They know unkempt living or working conditions are attractive breeding habitats for mosquitoes. They are shown all manner of reasons why a littered unkempt environment is bad. Does this change their attitude? No. Not even death changes their thinking. How do you deal with hard headed people like that? The problem of sick environmental hygiene is the fault of all the flippant litterers and prigs who feel they are too important to clean their own country.

In Singapore people believe anti-littering is a good law so they support it. Littering is against the law in TT too. Trinis admit it’s a good law. But they don’t support it.

They mess up the place with impunity. Then blame the government for filthy streets, parks, marketplaces, beaches, rivers, box drains etc. They then get afflicted by disease and are mad with everyone but themselves. But their own filth tolerant lifestyle caused their sickness. We know this problem isn’t going away in this generation or the next. Since this generation isn’t role-modelling change from habitual blatant lack of environmental hygiene. Their children, tens of thousands of them are very committed to following the anti-sanitation tolerant model illustrated to them.

As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. When will your deeds match your actions filth tolerant TT? The action of littering, of tolerance of anti-sanitation, of tolerance of unkempt living conditions inform children to ignore environmental hygiene as old talk.

SARAH PARKS

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