Land­slips de­vel­op­ing dai­ly in the Moru­ga/Table­land area are dis­plac­ing fam­i­lies, in­creas­ing taxi fares and cut­ting off com­mu­ni­ties.

While Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said al­most $300 mil­lion have been spent to re­pair over 50 land­slips in the re­gion, slip­pages con­tin­ue un­abat­ed caus­ing fur­ther dis­tress.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Bevin Lemo, the own­er of Bevin’s En­ter­pris­es Sawmill said he has lost more than 95 per cent of his cus­tomers be­cause of the state of the road.

He said there are nine land­slips along the 14-mile Pe­nal Rock Road, but not all are re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion from the min­istry.

“These are la­belled A to I and one clos­est to my sawmill is la­belled I. The land­slip is about 300 feet from the sawmill,” he said.

The Pe­nal Rock Road runs from Basse Terre Vil­lage, Moru­ga, to Pe­nal Junc­tion in Pe­nal and Lemo said the res­i­dents who live along the 14 mile-mark in San­ta Maria Vil­lage are al­so im­pact­ed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent Mary Gue­var­ro said taxi fares from Basse Terre to San­ta Maria in­creased from $6 to $12 re­cent­ly. Small par­lours can no longer get sup­plies and have been forced to shut down.

MP for Moru­ga/Table­land Michelle Ben­jamin said over 35 hous­es have al­ready col­lapsed in her con­stituen­cy and 100 more homes are threat­ened by land slip­pages.

“To­day is my of­fice day and I have seen many con­stituents who come here look­ing for as­sis­tance be­cause their homes are af­fect­ed by land­slips,” she said.

Ben­jamin said while land­slip projects were on­go­ing in her com­mu­ni­ty, there was not enough su­per­vi­sion.

“I have not seen a re­flec­tion of $300 mil­lion spent in Moru­ga. To say we have seen any im­prove­ment to the roads here, I will say no. Cer­tain parts of the Pe­nal Rock Road are im­pass­able, nor­mal ve­hi­cles can­not pass. Along Moru­ga taxi dri­vers are com­plain­ing about the cost of ve­hi­cle main­te­nance,” Ben­jamin said.

She al­so com­plained about shod­dy work be­ing done and not enough su­per­vi­sion by qual­i­ty con­trol en­gi­neers.

“We are see­ing the same project be­ing done mul­ti­ple times. For ex­am­ple at the Rock Riv­er RC school, those two land­slips were fixed in 2017, but they col­lapsed again and now, there is a con­tract award­ed again for these same two land­slips,” she re­vealed. “We are see­ing walls falling and there are no steel re­in­force­ments in them.”

While $200 mil­lion have been spent to fix Moru­ga Main Road, Ben­jamin said parts of the Lengua Road are im­pass­able.

“At Mandin­go Road, a con­trac­tor is there but the road is in a de­plorable state. Then at Roberts Vil­lage, four fam­i­lies are on the verge of los­ing their homes,” Ben­jamin said.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Sinanan said be­cause of the state of the soil, the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy was prone to land­slips.

“All the land­slips can­not be fixed at the same time, but there are sev­er­al land­slips which are be­ing fixed right now. We have an on­go­ing pro­gramme of land­slip re­pairs in Moru­ga. We start­ed with 21 land­slips but now we have over 60 land­slips in that area,” Sinanan re­vealed. Out of this, 50 have been re­paired.

Sinanan said sev­er­al more land­slips are ex­pect­ed to be fixed this year, not­ing that three have been ap­proved to be­gin be­fore the end of this year in the Fifth Com­pa­ny area.

He said some of the land­slips in Pe­nal Rock Road are al­so be­ing ad­dressed this year. “De­signs have to be done,” he added. Sinanan said the worst land­slips will be fixed first and he will en­sure all roads are pass­able, or al­ter­na­tive routes are found.

“Land­slips re­pairs are very ex­pen­sive and be­cause of the soil type and weath­er pat­terns more land­slips are crop­ping up,” he said, not­ing that 30 land­slip re­pair projects are on­go­ing around the coun­try while 35 more are be­ing de­signed.