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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Carli Bay fishermen want better roads

by

SHASTRI BOODAN
1251 days ago
20210914
President of the Carli Bay Fishing Association Imtiaz Khan (second from left in red t-shirt), and fishermen stand in front of one of the potholes at Carli Bay Road on Tuesday.  (Image: SHASTRI BOODAN)

President of the Carli Bay Fishing Association Imtiaz Khan (second from left in red t-shirt), and fishermen stand in front of one of the potholes at Carli Bay Road on Tuesday. (Image: SHASTRI BOODAN)

SHAS­TRI BOODAN

 

Fish­er­men op­er­at­ing out of Car­li Bay, Cou­va are de­mand­ing that the au­thor­i­ties fix drainage prob­lems on the road­way lead­ing to the bay. 

Im­ti­az Khan, pres­i­dent of the Car­li Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, along with a group of dis­grun­tled fish­er­men spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day morn­ing, and told us the road­way is rid­dled with pot­holes and floods not on­ly when it rains, but al­so when the tide is high and the near­by riv­er over­flows.  

Im­ti­az Khan said al­though the road­way is main­tained by the Min­istry of Works, no re­pairs have been done in sev­er­al years.  He al­so re­port­ed that the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion oc­ca­sion­al­ly ren­ders as­sis­tance through Al­lan “Taxi” Seep­er­sad and Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors for the area.

The fish­er­folk spokesman said fish­er­men al­so have been as­sist­ing by fill­ing the holes with dis­card­ed mor­tar and bricks from con­struc­tion sites. How­ev­er, he said, ma­jor work is need­ed to re­pair and raise the road­way. 

 “Some­times we have to use boats from Or­ange Val­ley to ac­cess the boats.  There is al­so an aban­doned mud road we have to use be­hind an aban­doned rice mill on the es­tate,” Khan said.

“We have around 200 reg­is­tered fish­er­men op­er­at­ing out of Car­li Bay. Fish­er­men pur­chase around $1,000 a day in gas. When we pur­chase gas, we al­so pay the Road Im­prove­ment Tax, yet the road­way for us to fish is left ne­glect­ed. This is one of sev­er­al prob­lems we are hav­ing that in­cludes se­cu­ri­ty, light­ing, cell phone re­cep­tion. We are in a state of des­per­a­tion,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Mean­while, Coun­cil­lor Seep­er­sad re­vealed that the Works and Trans­port Min­istry is ex­pect­ed to be­gin rem­e­dy­ing the sit­u­a­tion soon.

“Af­ter months of lob­by­ing for as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of Works we ex­pect to see some progress this week,” he said.  

“The Min­istry of Works’ as­phalt hot-mix plant has bro­ken down, but we are us­ing road sur­face millings (this is ma­te­ri­als re­cov­ered from road paving ex­er­cis­es) along with oil to patch holes, start­ing in Mc Bean Old Road, Car­li Bay and Cam­den,” he ex­plained.

He added: “Once the hot-mix plant is up, the of­fi­cials promised that more patch­ing would be done.  Both Coun­cil­lor Ra­jbal Maraj and I have been lob­by­ing to get some re­lief for the fish­er­men. They have it ex­treme­ly hard.” 

RoadMinistry of Works and Transport


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