On Sun­day, Doo­dooman Sankar and his wife Ram­daye, per­ished in a fire that en­gulfed their St Julien, Princes Town home.

The el­der­ly man had suf­fered a stroke and was be­ing tak­en care of by his wife and chil­dren. The cou­ple lived alone and ac­cord­ing to re­ports, were good res­i­dents and well loved in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Their deaths have left their chil­dren an­gry and in­con­solable, as they ques­tion whether the deaths could have been pre­vent­ed had the au­thor­i­ties heed­ed con­stant cries by res­i­dents of this sleepy com­mu­ni­ty nes­tled in Princes Town. Mem­bers of this com­mu­ni­ty would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in a protest not too long ago, call­ing on Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to take ac­tion to re­pair the land­slip that threat­ened their lives and liveli­hoods.

So with no re­lief com­ing, a trip that should have tak­en the Fire Ser­vice ten min­utes took 45 min­utes be­cause an al­ter­na­tive route had to be used due to the land­slips lead­ing to the Sankars’ home.

No one can say for cer­tain whether the cou­ple could have been saved had the land­slips not been there, but the re­al­i­ty is that by the time the fire­fight­ers got to their home they had al­ready been lost.

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath says he had writ­ten nu­mer­ous let­ters to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan about the land­slips but to date, noth­ing has hap­pened. It is not enough for Min­is­ter Sinanan to say the roads in St Julien were built on land which has a his­to­ry of shift­ing, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to main­tain them. That brings no com­fort to the fam­i­ly.

It can­not be that in a coun­try where bil­lions are al­lo­cat­ed an­nu­al­ly to his min­istry, Min­is­ter Sinanan could so cav­a­lier­ly dis­miss what is a re­al hu­man tragedy.

The deaths of Doo­dooman Sankar and his wife Ram­daye should not be in vain. No one else should suf­fer the fate they did be­cause no one cared enough to lis­ten to the cries of a com­mu­ni­ty in des­per­ate need of help.

So the ques­tion now is whether any­one, start­ing with the min­is­ter, will sit up and take no­tice that in many parts of the coun­try prob­a­bly nev­er vis­it­ed by some of our of­fice­hold­ers, cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing young chil­dren, are forced to use roads lit­tered with land­slips and pot­holes dai­ly to go about their busi­ness? Will those cit­i­zens have to wait much longer for the ser­vice they de­serve, or will they con­tin­ue to be ig­nored?

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, who was born and grew up in St Julien, has said things will not change un­til peo­ple get a gov­ern­ment that cares. That is an in­dict­ment on all politi­cians.

We don’t be­lieve Min­is­ter Sinanan should dis­miss this lat­est in­ci­dent light­ly. The fact is there is bare­ly a road left in St Julien and en­vi­rons and homes are al­so be­ing de­stroyed. It’s time, there­fore, to get an en­gi­neer­ing team in­to this com­mu­ni­ty to be­gin some kind of re­me­di­al work, not to men­tion do­ing the same in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties where there are sim­i­lar dis­tress­ing sto­ries.