Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Trav­ellers head­ing in­to Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day were made to en­dure the months of frus­tra­tion Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents had pent up over leak­ing sew­er lines in their com­mu­ni­ty.

From as ear­ly as 6 am, scores of res­i­dents burnt de­bris along the Beetham High­way caus­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion for over two hours.

“To the peo­ple this morn­ing, we sor­ry for putting you all out of your way but it was nec­es­sary for us to get our point across,” Wen­dell Jardeen told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“It is not the best way to go about it but it’s the on­ly way to get at­ten­tion be­cause that is the on­ly way the gov­ern­ment does deal with Beetham peo­ple. We are not tar­get­ing the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and make you feel no how,” Jardeen lament­ed.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia for close to six months, sew­er wa­ter has been flood­ing their homes, clog­ging their pipes while the stench has al­so been tak­ing a toll.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) start­ed sew­er pipeline works last Oc­to­ber, how­ev­er, res­i­dents said it has been over a month since WASA work­ers have re­turned to the site.

“I ask one of the guys who was work­ing WASA why they not on the project be­cause I see him once or twice around, he said they haven’t been paid. All the over­time they nev­er been paid so, they de­cide to stop com­ing out and do the work,” ac­cord­ing to Jardeen.

Some fam­i­lies, like Pa­tri­cia Far­rel, have had to move out of their homes.

“You could dive in the kitchen. We try to stop it but we couldn’t do noth­ing but all we could have done is pick up we fam­i­ly and just walk out of the place,” Pa­tri­cia lament­ed.

The de­bris was cleared by po­lice around 7 am, bring­ing an ease to the traf­fic con­ges­tion head­ing in and out of the cap­i­tal city. Po­lice stood guard for sev­er­al hours with one of­fi­cer say­ing “it was like play­ing cat and mouse with the res­i­dents”.

In re­sponse yes­ter­day, WASA not­ed that works to re­place a col­lapsed seg­ment of a 47-inch di­am­e­ter con­crete sew­er pipeline along Main Street com­menced on Oc­to­ber 15, 2021.

“It should be not­ed that what ap­pears to be a pause in works at the site oc­curred as the Au­thor­i­ty await­ed de­liv­ery of spe­cial­ly made con­crete cylin­ders for use in the in­stal­la­tion of three (3) man­holes. These cylin­ders have been re­ceived and trans­porta­tion to the job site be­gins to­day – Mon­day 10th Jan­u­ary 2022.”

WASA said over the pe­ri­od it has in­stalled var­i­ous pumps with­in the area to min­i­mize spills and as­sured res­i­dents every ef­fort is be­ing made to com­plete these works by Jan­u­ary 31.