A 13-year-old boy from the Rodrigo Bueno villa has died after falling into a cesspit. Residents denounced the ambulance took 40 minutes to arrive.
Gastón, who lived in the villa located in Costanera Sur, city of Buenos Aires, arrived from school on Monday to find his cat had fallen into a cesspit. When he tried to rescue it, he fell into the hole himself.
“The local residents tried to get him out as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t enough. They carried him in their arms to the entrance of the villa and the ambulance took over 40 minutes to arrive,” said Marino Sosa, a villa delegate, to news agency Télam.
Sosa pointed out at the lack of urbanisation in the villa as a direct cause of Gastón’s death: “The residents [of the villa] have to make cesspits, which are dangerous, because we don’t have sewers and we have a serious problem with water.”
Moving inside the villa is also a problem brought about by the lack of urbanisation. “Even if the ambulance had arrived five minutes after we called, it still could not have made it all the way into the passageway. The lack of streets that can be accessed by car is a daily source of problems, as is the lack of street lighting,” said Sosa.
The City’s Ombudsman filed a complaint to ensure the urbanisation of Rodrigo Bueno, but a favourable first-instance ruling was later overturned on appeal by the City government.
The Rodrigo Bueno villa is located next to Puerto Madero and is home to 2,000 people, who live without access to drinking water or sewers.
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