Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Fed up Beetham res­i­dents are threat­en­ing protest ac­tion if the au­thor­i­ties do not ad­dress a leak­ing sew­er line in their com­mu­ni­ty which they say is mak­ing their liv­ing con­di­tions near un­in­hab­it­able.

Over the past two weeks, a sec­tion of the Beetham main road has been cav­ing in and raw sew­er­age is leak­ing from an un­der­ground line. The hole, which first be­gan form­ing 16 days ago, now spans al­most 12 feet in length, rough­ly eight feet in width and at least six feet in depth. A clos­er in­spec­tion re­veals a pool of near stag­nant wa­ter eat­ing away the un­der lay­ers of the road­way, with noth­ing more than the as­phalt cling­ing to it­self. 

“Don’t walk there, the whole road could go,” Guardian Me­dia was warned dur­ing a site vis­it yes­ter­day.

Apart from ren­der­ing the road im­pass­able, the pun­gent scent of dirty, stag­nant wa­ter pen­e­trates the air, al­most im­me­di­ate­ly trig­ger­ing the gag re­flex of any­one who wasn’t ex­pect­ing to be greet­ed by it. 

“In any oth­er area - St James, West­moor­ings, any oth­er area - if this had hap­pened, this would have been fixed long time,” com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist An­der­son Williams told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day. 

He said the col­lapse has al­so re­sult­ed in sew­er­age back­ing up in­to res­i­dents’ homes.

Since the res­i­dents no­ti­fied the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), the coun­cil­lor and mem­ber of par­lia­ment of the prob­lem, he said all that was done was the block­ing of the road and a pump placed to flush the wa­ter out of the hole in­to a near­by drain. 

“It’s dan­ger­ous. It’s a haz­ard to the chil­dren es­pe­cial­ly, and to the whole com­mu­ni­ty,” Williams said.

He lament­ed that the on­ly way the com­mu­ni­ty gets any re­sults is when they protest, which he said is not fair to them.

“If it’s for me alone, I will protest be­cause the on­ly way to get some­thing done in Beetham and Laven­tille is by protest­ing.”

Beetham/Pic­ton coun­cil­lor Ak­il Au­dain said he has been in con­tact with WASA and they are ex­pect­ed to start mo­bil­is­ing to fix the prob­lem. How­ev­er, he not­ed this may take a few days. Au­dain said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is ex­pect­ed to re­pair a near­by tem­po­rary road­way for res­i­dents to use.