KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While res­i­dents of Wel­come Road, Cunu­pia, can fi­nal­ly en­joy a smooth dri­ve to and from their homes af­ter years of dust and pot­holes, the min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for road re­pairs says oth­er com­mu­ni­ties will have to be pa­tient.

“We do not have, the coun­try does not have, the mon­ey to do the amount of work that we want,” Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said yes­ter­day, while tour­ing 500 me­tres of new­ly paved road with Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecher­an and Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad.

Ameen said every com­plet­ed road prompts oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to ask when their turn will come.

“The truth is that it takes more than a few months to cor­rect years of ne­glect,” she said.

Ameen said the Gov­ern­ment is iden­ti­fy­ing the most crit­i­cal lo­cal gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture to re­pair, and crit­i­cal land­slips, some lead­ing to schools and oth­ers where peo­ple have lost their homes, are next on the list. She added that lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­lies on rev­enue from in­vest­ments the Gov­ern­ment is court­ing, in­clud­ing a steel plant and oil and gas arrange­ments.

“So we have to ask the coun­try to bear pa­tience.”

She blamed the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the cur­rent con­di­tion of the na­tion’s road net­work.

“We know that the PNM left the coun­try in a state, in a mess,” she said.

Ameen said the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) planned work on Wel­come Road in three phas­es be­tween 2010 and 2015, but she be­lieves on­ly the first was com­plet­ed be­fore the gov­ern­ment changed and scrapped the rest.

Wel­come Road serves thou­sands of res­i­dents, with sev­er­al roads and res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ments branch­ing off it. As the sur­face de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, res­i­dents made their own re­pairs, and Ram­per­sad de­liv­ered ma­te­r­i­al to fill pot­holes.

Ram­per­sad, who is al­so the Long­denville/Tal­paro coun­cil­lor, said the paving cov­ered what was pre­vi­ous­ly the worst sec­tion of Wel­come North Road. He said the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived very lit­tle fund­ing over nine and a half years un­der the PNM and could on­ly do small re­pairs.

“The res­i­dents were frus­trat­ed, but to­day is a very, very hap­py day in this com­mu­ni­ty.”

Seecher­an cred­it­ed the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion with fi­nal­ly get­ting the road done af­ter years of lob­by­ing.

In De­cem­ber 2024, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that res­i­dents felt ne­glect­ed and that their calls for re­pairs had gone un­heed­ed, a month af­ter a fiery protest over the same is­sue. They de­scribed dust that kept a pen­sion­er in­doors, dam­aged ve­hi­cles and taxi dri­vers rais­ing fares.

Ameen said the next step is drainage and that the cor­po­ra­tion will work with res­i­dents on sec­tions with­out drains to es­tab­lish at least earth­en drains, so wa­ter does not pool and dam­age the new sur­face. She asked res­i­dents to keep work­ing with their coun­cil­lor and MP so the drains could be es­tab­lished. She said the works have short­ened trav­el time to schools and work­places, and that taxi dri­vers are hap­py. She urged mo­torists not to speed. Ram­per­sad said drainage works will con­tin­ue, but many more ar­eas need re­pairs.