KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of the late Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Don­ald­son claim po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion is se­vere­ly ham­per­ing their lives, as of­fi­cials of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) have re­fused to re­pair two bridges that threat­en to leave them strand­ed in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The en­trance to Car­ry Road, Tabaquite, is a smooth dri­ve for a kilo­me­tre un­til reach­ing a rot­ting bridge where pieces of the wood­en planks have fall­en in­to the rivers in the com­mu­ni­ty. Be­yond the riv­er, bush­es cov­er most of the road lead­ing to the five house­holds be­tween the two bridges.

A sign on a tree warns mo­torists that the bridge is un­safe, with gap­ing holes ex­pos­ing a pre­car­i­ous drop.

Al­bert La­caille said the bridges were last re­paired 15 years ago. The sec­ond bridge be­gan col­laps­ing a few years ago, while the oth­er reached crit­i­cal de­cay last No­vem­ber. La­caille said while the CT­TRC was aware, a coun­cil mem­ber re­fused to sanc­tion re­pairs, say­ing they were “PNM”.

As he stood on the di­lap­i­dat­ed first bridge yes­ter­day, one of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, Robert Don­ald­son, said for the past 20 years the CT­TRC have been re­pair­ing the bridge us­ing boards that rot away in four years. He said the CT­TRC last paved Car­ry Road just be­fore the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tions but the work end­ed at the first bridge.

He claimed a CT­TRC of­fi­cial promised to con­tin­ue the work on­ly if the UNC re­tained gov­ern­ment.

“She said that on­ly if she got back in­to pow­er that they would do the rest. But there is this stig­ma stat­ing that every­body in the back here is PNM be­cause we are Don­ald­son, so they refuse to do any­thing for us in the back here since PNM in pow­er or UNC in pow­er. It does not mat­ter who is in pow­er. It is just ne­glect right through, and we are cit­i­zens of the coun­try, too. We pay our tax­es. We do every­thing nec­es­sary. We do not make any noise, but how many times will we be qui­et,” Don­ald­son said.

Res­i­dents said they went to Pi­paro/San Pe­dro/Tabaquite coun­cil­lor Hen­ry Awong, CT­TRC and Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes, but got no help.

Don­ald­son said with­in the five af­fect­ed house­holds, chil­dren left for school and adults went to work.

He said be­cause large ve­hi­cles re­fused to risk dri­ving over the bridges, there was no garbage col­lec­tion and the wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty could not re­pair leaks. The street­lights in the area are non func­tion­al, he said and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion could not ac­cess them for re­pairs.

“There were times I want­ed to walk out the road to meet fam­i­ly, but it was so dark with­out street­lights that we had to be home by 6 pm. If you are go­ing out, you must have some form of com­pa­ny, some­body to en­sure you go and some­body to make sure you reach back home safe­ly,” Josephine San­tana-Don­ald­son said.

Sawmill work­ers have placed planks across the bridge to al­low some ve­hi­cles to pass. With­out them, San­tana-Don­ald­son said, res­i­dents would have to walk.

She is re­lieved that no one has fall­en se­vere­ly ill or been in­jured be­cause an am­bu­lance would not want to cross the bridge.

“I want to tell Mr Hen­ry Awong and Ani­ta Haynes and the Gov­ern­ment that God is com­ing, and he is com­ing for one per­son. We are stand­ing by faith to­day. We are say­ing to you that we want the road fixed, the bridges fixed, and the road cut, please,” she said.

CT­TRC Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad said he was aware of the di­lap­i­dat­ed bridges, as a few res­i­dents spoke to him just over a week ago. He said he checked the min­utes of coun­cil meet­ings and not­ed that Awong had re­quest­ed the bridge re­pairs.

“Our tech­ni­cal team did an as­sess­ment and es­ti­mate of costs to re­pair both bridges. One needs cos­met­ic re­pairs and is pass­able, but the oth­er is dan­ger­ous.

“The prob­lem is that the es­ti­mate came af­ter the mid-year bud­get. We are await­ing the new bud­get so that the Min­istry can al­lo­cate fund­ing. Once we get our al­lo­ca­tion, we will try to give pri­or­i­ty to those two projects. We have sit­u­a­tions in oth­er ar­eas that are just as bad,” Ram­per­sad said.

He added that the CT­TRC com­mu­ni­cat­ed with oth­er agen­cies with bet­ter re­sources, such as the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE), and the bridge units un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Re­spond­ing to claims that the CT­TRC was po­lit­i­cal­ly bi­ased against the com­mu­ni­ty, he said, “I am not sure about that be­cause when we work, we work for every­one. We do not see red or yel­low when we work.”