Bridgetown.
Environmental Health Officers who work with the Ministry of Health’s Fogging Programme have been coming under attack from residents in some districts.
The latest incident occurred as recent as last Friday, when a team from the Vector Control Unit was pelted with rocks by youngsters while they were carrying out routine fogging operations in a St. James district.
That was just but one of a number of stone throwing incidents that officers have endured throughout the years, but they reported that it has increased in frequency within the last few months, to the point where the attacks are happening almost on a weekly basis.
Senior Environmental Health Officer, Vector Control Unit, Maurice Gaskin, told the Barbados Government Information Service that if the attacks continued the offending areas would not be visited.
“Some residents feel that the fog is detrimental to their health, others feel it is interrupting their ‘trade’, so they pelt at the trucks. What happens is that we pull out of the areas as soon as the stone throwing begins. Then some householders will say that we didn’t fog their district. But we have to look out for the safety of the officers. Some guys were hit in the head with rocks already. The thing is, you can’t see through the fog so you don’t see the rocks coming at you. If the guys say they are not going into these areas because they feel they are in danger, you can’t force them [to go],” he explained.
Mr. Gaskin added that the areas where they received frequent attacks included: Bush Hall, Licorish Village, Ivy and Brittons Hill in St. Michael, in addition to Inch Marlow, Christ Church and Redman’s Village and Welches in St. Thomas.
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