An elderly Middle Street, South Cummingsburg man says that the fumes and noise emanating from generators at Dr Balwant Singh Hospital are making his life uncomfortable and may have resulted in his mother being hospitalized, but according to the hospital they are operated under the guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
An upset Aubrey Kanhai, who visited Stabroek News yesterday, said that the generators which were installed earlier this year are operated for almost 24 hours each day.
When contacted, the hospital’s assistant administrator Walter Narine said the generators are not used for prime power. “They are on standby for when we have voltage fluctuation. It is only then we use it,” he said.
According to Narine, the hospital is currently working with the EPA to comply with the regulations it has set.
Kanhai told this newspaper that he made a report to the police last Wednesday but the issues regarding the generators are yet to be resolved. “Sometimes is 6.30 am to about 10 o’clock and then they may break and put it on back from 11 pm to 4 am,” the 63-year-old man said.
He stated that because of the noise he and his 81-year-old mother find it very difficult to sleep at night.
The man said that the exhaust pipes from the generators are not high enough as when the wind blows they are being affected by fumes. He opined that the generator needed to be higher than the hospital so that residents would not be affected. He said the hospital must have known that at some point a generator would be needed and as such could have made the necessary provision for it to be placed at the top of the building.
He said he would accept if the generators are used only in the event of blackouts as a few hours of the noise could be tolerated.
According to Kanhai, he spoke several times with the owner as well as the administrator of the hospital, but “they are not doing anything to silence it. Sometimes I does jump out of meh sleep. This [the generators being on] sometimes is a whole day thing.”
Kanhai added that while the police took a statement from him, he is unaware of what happened at the hospital end.
He said that recently his mother took ill and is now a patient of a city hospital. While noting that she is elderly, he said the noise and fumes from the generator might have contributed to her falling ill.
