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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Gran Couva pensioner in fear of landslide near home

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949 days ago
20220714

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

An 83-year-old Gran Cou­va woman is liv­ing in fear that her home will col­lapse around her.

Nageer­an Ram­di­al said a land­slide along the road­way in front of her home de­stroyed her daugh­ter’s home sev­er­al months ago and is now threat­en­ing hers.

She said the land­slip was caused by a leak­ing Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) pipeline but the au­thor­i­ty has de­nied this, say­ing their line was dam­aged by the shift­ing earth.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Ram­di­al ear­li­er this week af­ter heavy rains over the week­end caused the earth to shift more.

As she point­ed out the dirt push­ing against the pil­lars hold­ing up her home, Ram­di­al said she lives alone as her hus­band died four years ago.

She said she suf­fers from var­i­ous ail­ments and the stress of the im­pend­ing col­lapse of her home has be­come un­bear­able.

“The wa­ter wa­ter came down and break down my daugh­ter house and now it come down in mine and all the pil­lars just shift,” she said.

“I liv­ing in fear be­cause is I alone here and the boy does be here with me but he don’t be here all the time,” she added.

Her son, Jaglal lives a short dis­tance away and his home too was be­ing threat­ened by the land­slide.

He said his home now has mas­sive cracks in the floor. An ex­ten­sion he con­struct­ed some­time ago was al­so on the verge of col­laps­ing.

“Months now a house right there fall down and watch where I liv­ing, if they had come to do some­thing in all those months, all this prob­lem would not hap­pen,” Jaglal said.

He said em­ploy­ees of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion brought crushed ma­te­r­i­al to back­fill the space cre­at­ed by the land­slide but heavy rains over the week­end caused the ma­te­r­i­al to shift and sink.

“From Fri­day to Sat­ur­day, it dropped more than two feet and it con­tin­ue drop­ping so at least, some­body have to do some­thing,” he ap­pealed.

Like his moth­er, Jaglal blamed a leak­ing WASA pipeline but he said if the drains con­struct­ed along the road­way were done prop­er­ly, the slip­page would not have been so bad.

“The whole drain break away and go­ing, the whole road cav­ing in, cars could hard­ly pass here,” he said.

As he spoke, a woman who came to vis­it one of his neigh­bours ex­pressed shock at the state of the road­way. The woman said she would park be­fore the land­slide and walk to her des­ti­na­tion.

“Watch what she have to do, peo­ple afraid to dri­ve on that. I wait­ing to see what will hap­pen to all the peo­ple that live in the com­mu­ni­ty when the road fi­nal­ly break down,” Jaglal said.

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What WASA said

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed WASA’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Daniel Plen­ty for com­ment.

He said the leak was “dis­cov­ered and iso­lat­ed” on Ju­ly 3.

“Re­pairs com­menced on 8th Ju­ly and was com­plet­ed on 12th Ju­ly 2022. Note that the Au­thor­i­ty al­so has no pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ing re­port of this leak,” Plen­ty said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan but he did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.


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