SASCHA WIL­SON

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is be­ing urged to re­pair a land­slip on the Soledad Road in Clax­ton Bay which is threat­en­ing a mosque and a pri­ma­ry school.

The earth move­ment, which be­gan about a months ago, had al­ready claimed three-quar­ter of the road in front of the mosque.

It has al­so cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for res­i­dents and pupils of the near­by Mount Pleas­ant Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School who tra­verse the road on a dai­ly ba­sis.

Ummah T&T Mus­lim Lob­by Group Imam Rasheed Karim, in a let­ter to the min­is­ter plead­ing for his help, said the re­cent weath­er con­di­tion con­tributed to the land­slip.

He said, “Ummah T&T has been re­li­ably in­formed that a re­tain­ing wall con­struct­ed decades ago has been struc­tural­ly dam­aged and is in dire need of be­ing re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed or re­placed.”

He said en­gi­neers of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion es­ti­mat­ed the work to cost $3.5 mil­lion, but the cor­po­ra­tion doesn’t have the funds to un­der­take the project as each coun­cil­lor is on­ly al­lot­ted $10,000 for in­fra­struc­tur­al work.

Ask­ing the min­is­ter to in­ter­vene to avert a dis­as­ter, he said, “If the sit­u­a­tion is left un­tend­ed fur­ther ir­re­versible struc­tur­al dam­age will be done to the mosque build­ing which could col­lapse in due course.

“Sir, the mosque has been con­struct­ed by mem­bers of the Soledad Road Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty over the years through do­na­tions and vol­un­tarism and pro­vides a place of wor­ship, and a fa­cil­i­ty for events and oc­ca­sions in an at­mos­phere of love, to­geth­er­ness, peace, spir­i­tu­al ed­i­fi­ca­tion and se­cu­ri­ty. A lack of at­ten­tion to this loom­ing cri­sis will set back the com­mu­ni­ty from which it may nev­er re­cov­er.”

He added: We al­so make a plea for the Mt Pleas­ant Gov­ern­ment School which is sim­i­lar­ly en­dan­gered by the dev­as­tat­ing land­slip which threat­ens the two pub­lic build­ings and sev­er­al hous­es dai­ly.