As the coun­try is mov­ing for­ward the res­i­dents of Caratal Vil­lage in Cu­mo­to feels as though they are go­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

The is­sues are many and Guardian Me­dia toured the area to get a first-hand view.

They say there are bad­ly dam­aged roads, land­slides, over-grown road­side veg­e­ta­tion, an un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply, fre­quent pow­er out­ages, no lights on recre­ation area, aban­doned com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre con­struc­tion project and no bus nor taxi ser­vice.

“Some of these things are dat­ing back since be­fore I was born and I am in my twen­ties,” said Avinash Sook­nanan, In­ter­im Chair­man of Caratal Vil­lage Coun­cil.

In­fre­quent wa­ter sup­ply/pow­er out­ages

Sook­nanan said the wa­ter sup­ply is not on a con­stant sched­ule. He said some­times they get wa­ter in their taps “once or twice a week if we lucky.”

He said it comes once a week in the night time. He ex­plained that they have writ­ten to WASA sev­er­al times and they have come to con­duct per­son­al site vis­its, but the sit­u­a­tion has not im­proved.

“Now is Christ­mas, every­body wants to clean.”

He added that there are sev­er­al pow­er out­ages in the area and res­i­dents are fear­ful that their ap­pli­ances would be dam­aged due to this.

Bus ser­vice stopped/ no taxi ser­vice

The in­ter­im chair­man said in ad­di­tion to the com­plaints re­gard­ing wa­ter, there is al­so a trans­porta­tion predica­ment fac­ing the vil­lagers. He said there used to have a re­li­able bus ser­vice, which helped trans­port school chil­dren and the el­der­ly. But as Sook­nanan ex­plained, the ser­vice had to be stopped be­cause of the bad roads.

“The size of the bus, it couldn’t pass on the road any­more.”

He said the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion put steel sheet over a bro­ken cylin­der on the road­way but didn’t work. Al­so, he said taxis on­ly ven­ture in­to the area at a high cost.

“I know peo­ple have paid taxi dri­vers 100 dol­lars just to trans­port them 4 miles from Cu­mo­to junc­tion, that’s how bad it is in here.”

Sinanan said to top it off there is one street where the garbage col­lec­tors refuse to ven­ture be­cause of the size and con­di­tion of the road. He said be­cause of this, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion dropped 3 bar­rels on the main road and vil­lagers de­pend on a good Samar­i­tan from the area to pass around to col­lect oth­er peo­ple’s garbage and then they would drop it in the bar­rel.”

Bad roads/land­slides

But this is just one of the is­sues fac­ing the roads.

Sook­nanan said there are about more than 10 land­slides in the area. He said, “these things have not been ad­dressed, gov­ern­ment come, gov­ern­ment go.”

He said res­i­dents are will­ing to work with who­ev­er is in au­thor­i­ty in or­der to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion.

“You know how many times we have a mem­ber that went in­to the cor­po­ra­tion and begged coun­cil­lors that have rep­re­sent­ed us be­fore to give us some ma­te­r­i­al and we will patch the road our­selves and still noth­ing.”

He said giv­en the size of the pot­holes in the com­mu­ni­ty he refers to them as “la­goons.”

He added that when it rains the sit­u­a­tion get a lot worse. Sook­nanan said flood­ing is al­most al­ways cer­tain be­cause the ma­jor rives have not been drenched in many years.

Caratal falls un­der the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC).

No recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties

In terms of in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, the area is al­so lag­ging be­hind. They have one sa­van­nah but that too is un­us­able.

“You are run­ning on the sa­van­nah and you could break your foot be­cause there are big holes.”

He added that af­ter fight­ing to get lights on the ground for years it was in­stalled but nev­er con­nect­ed af­ter two years. In ad­di­tion, the res­i­dents al­so lob­bied for a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and were hap­py when the foun­da­tion was laid for the start of con­struc­tion, but “for some strange rea­son the project stopped.” Now all that is left on the site is over­grown bush.

Sook­nanan said go­ing to the me­dia is the ab­solute last re­sort.

He said they have writ­ten to every­one they could think of.

He ex­plained that on­ly re­cent­ly they even wrote the Prime Min­is­ter and was told by his of­fice that the cor­re­spon­dence would be sent to the rel­e­vant min­istries.

“I would like to call us the for­got­ten area in Trinidad,” Sook­nanan said.

MP re­sponds

Con­tact­ed on the host of is­sues Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein said, “I have been in con­tact with sev­er­al min­istries for Guat­a­pa­jaro road and St Marie Em­manuel Road, Pub­lic util­i­ties both WASA and T&TEC, re­quest­ed elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of Caratal recre­ation ground.”

She said she has al­so re­quest­ed “reg­u­lar­ly” to the SGRC for the grounds to be cut and par­tic­u­lar­ly over­grown bush on road­ways, reg­u­lar garbage col­lec­tion, re­quest­ed truck borne wa­ter, re­quest­ed box drains and for en­gi­neers to vis­it.

The MP added that she has been in con­tact with Dig­i­cel to fa­cil­i­tate a cell tow­er for ef­fi­cient reg­u­lar in­ter­net ser­vice “par­tic­u­lar­ly for the school chil­dren who are re­quired to com­plete school as­sign­ments via com­put­er.”

In ad­di­tion, Newal­lo-Ho­sein said she wrote the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port for road­works and land­slips, in ad­di­tion to drainage “and in re­cent times in­dis­crim­i­nate log­ging.”

Newal­lo-Ho­sein said that she too is wait­ing for re­spons­es from the rel­e­vant agen­cies to help the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ty.