Richard Lord

Res­i­dents along Blan­chisseuse Main Road re­main cut off from the rest of the coun­try as a ma­jor land­slide oc­curred on Mon­day morn­ing. The an­gry res­i­dents said the land­slide was caused by a leak­ing pipeline and heavy rain­fall over the past few days. The area was cor­doned off by WASA of­fi­cials on the scene yes­ter­day. The pipeline was locked off and was be­ing re-rout­ed. Me­dia work­ers were ad­vised to evac­u­ate the van­tage point they as­sem­bled at to re­port the event. "This is an un­safe area...The land could col­lapse at any­time," an of­fi­cial of WASA ad­vised. Short­ly be­fore the ar­rival of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, res­i­dents of the area en­gaged in an open dis­agree­ment over who was to blame for the prob­lem.

While some said the area was be­ing ne­glect­ed by those in au­thor­i­ty, oth­ers said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment should not be blamed for the in­ci­dent, as "the PNM was in pow­er for sev­er­al years and didn't do any­thing" for the peo­ple of the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty. An­oth­er res­i­dent ap­pealed for good sense to pre­vail as Warn­er ap­proached. "Let us don't go an at­tack any­body here this morn­ing, please," the res­i­dent said. Warn­er then vis­it­ed the scene. He was ac­com­pa­nied by per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Cheryl Black­man and oth­er of­fi­cials of his min­istry. Af­ter view­ing the prob­lem for a few min­utes, he pro­ceed­ed dis­cuss the way for­ward with a group of res­i­dents. Lat­er he told re­porters re­pair start­ed yes­ter­day and the road would be "sure up" with­in the next nine days.

Warn­er al­so told res­i­dents that the wa­ter sup­ply would be re­stored by this morn­ing. He said the land­slide was caused by a leak­ing WASA pipeline. Res­i­dent Ram­bal Chan said ear­li­er that they were frus­trat­ed by the ne­glect giv­en to them by sev­er­al gov­ern­ments over the past years. "It is all about the blame game," he added. Chan said the res­i­dents were suf­fer­ing, as they were main­ly em­ployed in farm­ing and the live­stock busi­ness. He said he need­ed to get feed to his an­i­mals and that there was a woman due to give birth any day now. He said the road was im­pass­able and res­i­dents could not go to work. He added that they had a very sad Christ­mas. Warn­er said "emer­gency works" start­ed yes­ter­day and the road would be re­paired with­in the next nine days.