Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

In Rio Claro/Ma­yaro scenic beach­es stretch for 17 miles and along with man­groves and rivers, of­fer a per­fect des­ti­na­tion for tourists and ad­ven­ture seek­ers. With a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 res­i­dents in 39 com­mu­ni­ties, it’s the largest land mass among the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, cov­er­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 853 square kilo­me­tres.

Trinidad’s east coast is al­so a lu­cra­tive area for the en­er­gy sec­tor. The first com­mer­cial oil dis­cov­ery was made off Point Radix in 1968 and the re­gion is home to some of the coun­try’s largest oil and gas pro­duc­ers.

How­ev­er, a large sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion are in­volved in agri­cul­ture, fish­ing, and small busi­ness­es.

Re­cent­ly, a protest over the de­plorable con­di­tion of the Man­zanil­la Road put the area in­to the na­tion­al spot­light. The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port has as­sured that re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work is on­go­ing. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the tran­quil and pic­turesque re­gion re­cent­ly res­i­dents were warm and friend­ly but sev­er­al seemed not to be con­cerned about the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions to the ex­tent that re­cent ad­just­ments to four bound­aries and the cre­ation of a new dis­trict did not seem to faze them.

The new dis­trict is Ma­yaro North, while the dis­trict for­mer­ly known as Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare has been re­named Ma­yaro South/Guayagua­yare and Rio Claro South/Cat’s Hill, is now Rio Claro South. One res­i­dent, who was work­ing his taxi for hire in Rio Claro, said he was not both­ered by the bound­ary changes.

“I know where my polling sta­tions are and I know who I am vot­ing. That’s about it,” he said.

From Rio Claro to Guayagua­yare, prob­lems with the wa­ter sup­ply and di­lap­i­dat­ed roads were the main con­cerns.

In the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Ker­na­ham Road, Man­zanil­la Road, along the pop­u­lar stretch known as The Co­conuts, res­i­dents said they have been ap­peal­ing for years for bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture but they have been ig­nored.

As he re­laxed on a ham­mock in his shed lo­cat­ed across from a breath­tak­ing beach­front, 60-year-old Ram­raj Bridge­mo­han said: “We need the road fixed. Take a dri­ve in the vil­lage and see how the road is very bad.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bridge­mo­han, wa­ter­mel­on, co­conut and bo­di are the main crops grown in the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but ir­ri­ga­tion is a chal­lenge.

“We does use riv­er wa­ter and when that dry up in crop time we have to go all about to look all about and look for wa­ter be­cause when the riv­er dry we don’t have pipe-borne wa­ter, to say a reg­u­lar sup­ply,” he said.

“Some­times we get two times (a month). Some­times three weeks you don’t get wa­ter. All them tank emp­ty you have to go out and full.”

Com­ment­ing on elec­tion cam­paign­ing in the area, he said: “Every­body cam­paign­ing but any par­ty in­side we still hav­ing the same prob­lem.”

A few miles away in Guayagua­yare, Dex­ter Bri­an Jes­per said roads that had not been re-sheet­ed since 2004 were re­cent­ly paved be­cause of the elec­tions.

“Every­body com­plain­ing, the roads are in a ter­ri­ble state. The drainage, it is the worst. I think the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the drainage (main­te­nance) should be back on stream. You get­ting clogged drains, you get­ting floods and then here is an in­dus­tri­al area, a lot of equip­ment pass­ing here and once rain fall and them heavy equip­ment pass the roads be­come di­lap­i­dat­ed,” he said.

Jas­par, who be­lieves the so­lu­tion is lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, added: “In my opin­ion, I think re­form is a good thing be­cause you have the cor­po­ra­tion con­trolled by one par­ty and then you have Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. With­out the ac­knowl­edge­ment from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment you get noth­ing done down here.”

Union Vil­lage, Rio Claro, res­i­dent Lau­rence Ghan­ny said the Rio Claro/Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion needs more fund­ing to fix is­sues in the dis­trict.

“The cor­po­ra­tion is in a de­plorable state of fi­nances. They don’t have the fi­nances to do what they think they could do to up­lift the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Res­i­dents have re­named a sec­tion of Ec­clesville Road, Rio Claro, Bangladesh be­cause it is plagued with land­slips—at least 15.

They com­plained that when the road be­gan cav­ing two years ago noth­ing was done, and since then at least one home has col­lapsed and sev­er­al oth­ers are threat­ened.

Ma­hase Ram­pat, 65, who lives alone, said at his age it would be im­pos­si­ble for him to re­build his home if it col­lapsed.

“If they don’t fix it my house will go, it al­ready has cracks,” he said.

Ram­pat ex­pressed con­cern that no re­pairs have start­ed on any of the land­slips.

“They (of­fi­cials) does pass but they don’t re­al­ly come by me,” he said, adding that al­though the road is closed, res­i­dents still have to pass there to get to and from his home.

Fish­er­man Kevin Nicholas blew a horn as he stood on the Ma­yaro beach off Plai­sance Road, sig­nalling to fel­low fish­er­men that it was time to go out to sea.

Ac­cord­ing to fish­er­folk in the area, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 pounds of fish is sup­plied to the coun­try from Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare, yet they are ne­glect­ed. They say that they have no fa­cil­i­ties - no lights or cold stor­age for their catch, no lock­ers. The $35 mil­lion fish land­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Guayagua­yare, com­plet­ed in 2012, was nev­er oc­cu­pied due its poor de­sign and con­struc­tion and it is falling apart, while the Or­to­rie Fish­ing De­pot is in a state of dis­re­pair.

Will Joseph com­plained: “First to be­gin with we have no fa­cil­i­ties we don’t have a mend­ing shed. We have noth­ing to do noth­ing, that is what Ma­yaro is about.

“Guayagua­yare get a white ele­phant. Or­toire get a white ele­phant, Ma­yaro get noth­ing. Right now Ma­yaro is a place where you just park up your boats is on­ly the seine go out here be­cause when the tide come in, you can’t re­al­ly bring your boat in.”

Com­plain­ing that fish­er­men are be­ing ne­glect­ed, Joseph said: “We hold­ing fish by truck­loads, over 100,000 pounds of fish com­ing out of Ma­yaro, and yet still we be­ing ne­glect­ed.”

Ver­non Arm­strong, of Lib­ertville, Rio Claro, laugh­ing­ly ad­mit­ted that he had planned to tell can­di­dates in his dis­trict that he would vote for them if they fixed the road. How­ev­er, he did not get the chance as last week­end the road was re­paired.

He said more em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties should be pro­vid­ed for young peo­ple as jobs at BpTT are not as wide­ly avail­able as they were years ago.

“A lot of young peo­ple have moved out of the area, who go­ing Port-of-Spain, who go­ing Ch­agua­nas. I have three broth­ers liv­ing in Ch­agua­nas be­cause work is on the out­side,” Arm­strong said.

Dex­ter Mar­shall, who cul­ti­vates sweet pep­per, shad­ow beni and pi­men­to, said more in­cen­tives are need­ed to as­sist farm­ers. He said prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a ma­jor prob­lem. While he was for­tu­nate that his crops have nev­er been tar­get­ed by thieves, Mar­shall said farm­ers work hard to pro­duce their crops and need pro­tec­tion.

“For a man to go out there and plant he thing in a nice way, wait­ing for his crop. He check it to­mor­row, the next day and when he go back it not even have enough to pick, the thief just come and go with it. That is up­set­ting, it is cause all kinds of is­sues,” he said.