An­na-Lisa Paul

Res­i­dents of New Street, Ca­roni are ap­peal­ing to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to call an im­me­di­ate halt to work be­ing done by a con­trac­tor in the area as they fear it could be­come a ma­jor dis­as­ter soon.

One day af­ter sev­er­al large fis­sures be­gan ap­pear­ing in the dry mud­dy em­bank­ment, res­i­dents ex­pressed con­cern that the re­main­ing struc­ture could sud­den­ly col­lapse, lead­ing to their homes be­ing flood­ed out.

David Boodram said, “We have been hav­ing a prob­lem for the longest while with the riv­er bank. It’s been cav­ing in and the con­trac­tor has been com­ing back and fix­ing it, just do­ing a fast job and go­ing their way.”

“This will af­fect the en­tire vil­lage and in pre­vi­ous floods, we have had vil­lagers who have had to climb up on their roofs to get away from flood wa­ters.”

Urg­ing that it was not some­thing to tri­fle with, Boodram said, “Con­trac­tors came twice al­ready to fix this same spot and noth­ing has been done prop­er­ly. We have had no feed­back from en­gi­neers.”

Ac­cus­ing the con­trac­tors of hav­ing re­moved the trees and sur­round­ing veg­e­ta­tion that had act­ed as sta­bil­is­ing agents to hold the dirt in place, Boodram added, “They just come and cleared down every­thing with­out speak­ing to the vil­lagers first.”

“Last Oc­to­ber, the en­tire vil­lage was af­fect­ed and we can’t go through that again.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day an ex­ca­va­tor and a roller which boast­ed the in­signia of V&V Con­tract­ing Ltd were seen parked atop the riv­er bank.

Kissoon Bridge­mo­han echoed Boodram’s con­cerns as he point­ed to the stretch of em­bank­ment and said, “This piece cav­ing in. They fixed it last time and they come back and fix it again. Is three times now they had to fix this be­tween Ju­ly and now.”

Point­ing to a lone co­conut tree, he said, “That saved the whole bank for now or it would have caved in. This want fix­ing and ram­ming.”

Latch­man Ramkissoon of New Street Ex­ten­sion said he had warned the con­trac­tor about “grad­ing down” the riv­er bank.

He claimed, “They grade down the bank and take out the strength of the bank. Is three times I beg them not to in­ter­fere with it.”

Tawarie Sad­hoo who has been liv­ing in the area for the past 40 years, de­scribed the riv­er as a ter­ri­ble mon­ster when it does come down.

He said, “It’s about two months now they com­plet­ed the em­bank­ment and this come and hap­pen. We are in the peak of the rainy sea­son and we haven’t got­ten any big set of rain yet to do any ma­jor dam­ages but we ex­pect­ing ma­jor flood­ing like last year.”

“Our prob­lem isn’t the em­bank­ment, but they take out all the veg­e­ta­tion and the riv­er keeps slip­ping and me­an­der­ing…com­ing clos­er to the vil­lage. We want the con­trac­tor to rec­ti­fy this and for a com­pa­ny who knows about bank­ing the riv­er to do some­thing ur­gent­ly be­cause this a mon­ster when it comes down.”

Con­tact­ed on it, Sinanan as­sured, “What is cur­rent­ly be­ing done is part of an ex­ist­ing con­tract which in­cludes de-silt­ing works and the con­trac­tor will bring in dirt to build back the riv­er bank. The on­go­ing con­tract is far from fin­ished.”

He said of­fi­cials vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day to get a look at what has been done thus far.