MP for Tabaquite Ms Ani­ta Haynes is call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to ur­gent­ly re­pair dan­ger­ous land­slips threat­en­ing to ma­roon com­mu­ni­ties across her con­stituen­cy. 

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from MP Haynes:

The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite, Ms. Ani­ta Haynes, is once again call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to ur­gent­ly un­der­take the re­pair of de­te­ri­o­rat­ed road­ways and dan­ger­ous land­slips threat­en­ing to ma­roon com­mu­ni­ties across the con­stituen­cy. 

MP Haynes re­counts, “Up­on tak­ing of­fice in 2020, one of the first projects I launched was the #FixOur­Road­sTabaquite Cam­paign with the aim of high­light­ing the ter­ri­ble con­di­tion of the con­stituen­cy’s long-ne­glect­ed road in­fra­struc­ture and urg­ing the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) to fi­nal­ly ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. The very projects we called at­ten­tion to then have now wors­ened and com­mu­ni­ties are on the verge of be­ing ma­rooned fol­low­ing con­tin­ued gov­ern­ment in­ac­tion.”

The lat­est ad­di­tion to a long list of road­ways that have be­come treach­er­ous to tra­verse is the Bras­so Tamana Road. As a re­sult of mul­ti­ple wors­en­ing land­slips, res­i­dents are forced to take risky jour­neys dai­ly. More­over, when it rains, the road is ren­dered im­pass­able, pre­vent­ing res­i­dents from get­ting to work and back home forc­ing the clo­sure of the near­by Bras­so Ve­na­do Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. An al­ter­nate route to the school, via Al­leyne Road, is al­so lit­tered with land­slips and is im­pass­able to some ve­hi­cles as rain­fall re­duces the road­way to slush. Haynes notes, “With teach­ers no longer man­dat­ed to fa­cil­i­tate on­line learn­ing sup­port, stu­dents are fac­ing se­ri­ous learn­ing loss if this sit­u­a­tion is not reme­died. ”   

“In fact,” Haynes notes, “fol­low­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the prin­ci­pal of the Bras­so Ve­na­do School, I wrote to the MOWT in 2020 specif­i­cal­ly call­ing for the worst parts of the Bras­so Tamana Road to be re­paired. That let­ter was ig­nored, forc­ing res­i­dents to pool their re­sources to­geth­er, pur­chase ma­te­r­i­al and at­tempt a tem­po­rary fix on their own. Ef­forts were al­so made by the Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, Mr Hen­ry Awong, to un­der­score the ur­gency of this sit­u­a­tion. I wish to re­mind the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port that they have a du­ty to all Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing those of rur­al ar­eas.”

“My of­fice has con­duct­ed site vis­its and pro­vid­ed up­dates to the MOWT, I’ve raised the mat­ter in cor­re­spon­dence, in the Par­lia­ment and in the me­dia. Res­i­dents have al­so tak­en ac­tion - not on­ly via protest but al­so by mak­ing at­tempts to re­pair some ar­eas - and still, there has been no ac­tion by the min­istry. This has re­sult­ed in per­sons feel­ing aban­doned and dis­re­spect­ed by the gov­ern­ment.”

The Tabaquite MP is ask­ing what will it take for the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to fi­nal­ly act, “The ter­ri­ble road in­fra­struc­ture through­out Tabaquite is not a mere mat­ter of in­con­ve­nience, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic safe­ty that hurts res­i­dents’ pock­ets while in­duc­ing anx­i­ety and stress. There are many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties like Bras­so Ve­na­do and Los Ata­jos.

We can look at ar­eas in Gran Cou­va, Caratal, Coros­al, Guaracara and San Fa­bi­en to name a few. In ad­di­tion to ter­ri­ble roads and un­ad­dressed land­slips there are high traf­fic ar­eas, res­i­den­tial and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties, such as Light­bourne Road, Hous­sa Trace and Bac­chus Trace, which are forced to cross over di­lap­i­dat­ed wood­en bridges. There’s al­so an ex­ten­sive list of road­ways in need of pot­hole and road de­pres­sion re­pairs.

We are con­stant­ly giv­en ex­cus­es as to why work can not be done - no mon­ey, no equip­ment, no ma­te­r­i­al. What ex­cuse will be pro­vid­ed should a tragedy strike? As time goes on, these is­sues be­come more cost­ly to ad­dress and cit­i­zens pay the price. This is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of cit­i­zens pay­ing for the gov­ern­ment's in­ac­tion.”