Yvonne Webb

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Moru­ga/Table­land Clifton De Coteau has called for pa­tience from res­i­dents of La Lune who staged a fiery protest yes­ter­day morn­ing over de­plorable road con­di­tions in the con­stituen­cy.De Coteau said the roads, which were in­un­dat­ed with land­slips, would be fixed.Res­i­dents, who say they are fed up with emp­ty promis­es, took mat­ters in­to their own hands yes­ter­day to draw na­tion­al fo­cus to their sit­u­a­tion af­ter parts of the road col­lapsed.

They said not on­ly bad roads but rot­ting bridges and lack of pub­lic util­i­ties, in­clud­ing wa­ter, con­tin­ued to make their lives mis­er­able.Be­fore dawn, res­i­dents piled de­bris across the road, mak­ing the main thor­ough­fare im­pass­able.Un­der the eyes of po­lice­men, who came in at least three ve­hi­cles, the res­i­dents burned tyres, logs and scrap ma­te­r­i­al.The Fire Ser­vices were called in to ex­tin­guish the fire but not be­fore the sit­u­a­tion caused a traf­fic pile-up.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, Coun­cil­lor Jayann Gra­ham, said the sit­u­a­tion was life-threat­en­ing.She said the road had been in a state of dis­re­pair for too long and at­tempts to get rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­pair the road have fall­en on deaf ears. She charged De Coteau, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, of do­ing noth­ing to im­prove the in­fra­struc­ture in the con­stituen­cy.

"The road, which is di­rect­ly op­po­site the beach, is dan­ger­ous. It is a haz­ard to the res­i­dents and if it con­tin­ues to cave in then we can brace for bad ac­ci­dents," Gra­ham added.She ques­tioned whether they were be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.In re­sponse, De Coteau said over the years he had been writ­ing let­ters to var­i­ous min­is­ters of works to tack­le the prob­lems.He said two for­mer min­is­ters–Jack Warn­er and his suc­ces­sor Em­manuel George–vis­it­ed the area and promised to help.

De Coteau added he had al­so brought the sit­u­a­tion to the at­ten­tion of the cur­rent Works Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan who was work­ing on re­solv­ing the sit­u­a­tion, which, he said, was cost­ly.