Chatham protesters on hunger strike

The Chatham/Cap-de-ville residents have been up in arms against the proposed construction of the 341,000 metric-tonne aluminium smelter plant. On Monday, residents stopped Trintoplan and ALCOA’s personnel from conducting geo-physical surveys at the site.

Supported by the Chatham/Cap-de-ville Environmental Protection Group, the residents, which included several elderly persons, housewives and children, pitched a makeshift tent on the junction of Food Crop Road. They kept an all night and day vigil.

In a telephone interview yesterday, the group’s president, Fitzroy Beache, told Newsday yesterday that if their protests are met with Government insisting on conducting geo-physical surveys, residents would embark on a hunger strike.

Beache said, “No one is coming to talk to us. Up to today, we have not seen any minister or anybody in authority, so we have decided that drastic times call for drastic measures.”

Beache pointed out that residents’ resolve had been strengthened, after information was leaked to them that ALCOA had met similar resistance in other countries in their attempts to construct smelter plants.

“We are in this for the long haul, and we are prepared to fight. Not with weapons or anything like that, but with our mouth and through peaceful means,” Beache said.