Chester Sam­bra­no

The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite Ani­ta Haynes Al­leyne, is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) to ur­gent­ly ad­dress the long-stand­ing road col­lapse along Bonne Aven­ture Main Road (in the vicin­i­ty of Ra­goo­bar Lands). 

In a me­dia re­lease, Haynes Al­leyne said, “This road col­lapse has been a ma­jor is­sue for more than two years. What start­ed off as a de­pres­sion was not prop­er­ly ad­dressed when brought to the Min­istry of Works’ at­ten­tion. On­ly af­ter rais­ing the is­sue in the Par­lia­ment and in the me­dia on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, de­spite is­su­ing let­ters to the Min­is­ter, were tem­po­rary re­pair works con­duct­ed.” 

The Tabaquite MP said con­cerns re­gard­ing the scope and ex­e­cu­tion of the re­quired road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion were raised.

“I've spo­ken to tech­nocrats of the MOWT as well as Min­is­ter Sinanan on many oc­ca­sions. A meet­ing was al­so held at the Covenant City Church in Gas­par­il­lo last Feb­ru­ary dur­ing which se­ri­ous con­cerns were re­it­er­at­ed.

Specif­i­cal­ly, con­cerns sur­round­ing re­peat­ed short-lived fix­es and the widen­ing of the de­pres­sion, as well as the project time­line in the face of the up­com­ing rainy sea­son and lim­it­ed drainage ca­pac­i­ty in the area, were brought to the of­fi­cials’ at­ten­tion.” In June 2023, more ex­ten­sive yet still tem­po­rary road re­pairs were con­duct­ed. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the road was left nar­row­er and steel struc­tures lim­it­ed mo­torists’ vis­i­bil­i­ty, pre­sent­ing a se­ri­ous pub­lic safe­ty haz­ard. At the start of this year, the MOWT pub­lished in the news­pa­per that this road col­lapse, along with oth­er ur­gent land­slips in Tabaquite, would be ad­dressed with­in this fis­cal year. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, de­lays in ex­e­cu­tion have re­sult­ed in the mat­ter wors­en­ing rather than be­ing im­proved.” 

MP Haynes Al­leyne em­pha­sised that Bonne Aven­ture Main Road is the main artery lead­ing in and out of Gas­par­il­lo, pos­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns for pub­lic safe­ty and traf­fic con­ges­tion as the road con­di­tion wors­ens.

“I am urg­ing the Min­is­ter of Works to en­sure that the re­quired road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works are un­der­tak­en with ur­gency.

We are now in­to a third Rainy Sea­son since this is­sue first arose and the wa­ter­way un­der the road col­lapse is ex­pect­ed to pose fur­ther chal­lenges to the ex­e­cu­tion of the road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work at this time. Once again, cit­i­zens are pay­ing the price for de­lays and in­suf­fi­cient road re­pair works - pay­ing with our tax dol­lars to fix the same prob­lem over and over and pay­ing with the de­clin­ing qual­i­ty of goods and ser­vices de­liv­ered by this gov­ern­ment. Ac­tion must be tak­en now be­fore the price gets high­er.”