SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Res­i­dents of Be­ju­cal Road, Ch­agua­nas, staged a protest demon­stra­tion and burned tires on Mon­day, de­mand­ing that the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties re­pair their di­lap­i­dat­ed roads.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said the res­i­dents are fed up.

MP Ram­bal­ly told Guardian Me­dia none of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were en­gag­ing with him or the res­i­dents to find a so­lu­tion.  He said he even threat­ened le­gal ac­tion on be­half of the res­i­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ch­agua­nas West MP, the road is be­ing un­der­mined by a lot of leak­ing wa­ter lines and has poor drainage. He said he has been writ­ing to the au­thor­i­ties since 2020 seek­ing as­sis­tance.

“The Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port [Ro­han Sinanan] played the game of pass­ing the buck.  Be­fore any­thing can hap­pen or any state­ment could be made even by WASA con­cern­ing the road, the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port im­me­di­ate­ly came out, passed the buck and said WASA was re­spon­si­ble for the [bad] roads here. He even blamed the weight of the trucks pass­ing here, [say­ing] that the trucks were re­spon­si­ble,” MP Ram­bal­ly told Guardian Me­dia.

He said the road is used by sev­er­al busi­ness­es which em­ploy around 300 peo­ple in to­tal. But he point­ed out that the busi­ness­es in the area have been un­der­tak­ing road re­pairs.  He said busi­ness­men have writ­ten at least 25 let­ters to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ask­ing for the roads to be fixed.

MP Ram­bal­ly said he even sug­gest­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and oth­er agen­cies to get the road fixed.

Chaguanas West MP Dinesh Rambally at the scene of the demonstration at Bejucal Road, Chaguanas, on Monday 7 February 2022. (Image: SHASTRI BOODAN)

Sources at the Min­istry of Works told Guardian Me­dia that the road falls un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and not the Min­istry of Works.

Samuel Sankar, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area on the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said he and a team from the TPRC met with busi­ness­men and toured the area in the last quar­ter of 2021.

Coun­cil­lor Sankar said monies have been al­lo­cat­ed for some re­pairs on the road. How­ev­er, he said no monies have been re­leased by the Gov­ern­ment for the pur­chase of ma­te­ri­als. Sankar said it would cost around $500,000 to do some re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work.

“We have done the nec­es­sary quo­ta­tions ,es­ti­mates and sur­veys, but we have no mon­ey to do any­thing.  Mon­ey is the prob­lem,” he told Guardian Me­dia.