Sascha Wil­son

Wor­ried that soon their homes will be de­stroyed by a ma­jor land­slip, res­i­dents of In­di­an Walk, Princes Town made an­oth­er ap­peal to the au­thor­i­ties to ur­gent­ly com­mence works.

Chant­i­ng, “We want we house fix. We want we road fix,” res­i­dents said fol­low­ing their protest three years ago, the gov­ern­ment did some work but it did not help. A cou­ple and their chil­dren had to evac­u­ate their home in 2017 be­cause it was on the verge of col­lapse. Bro­ken pieces of con­crete and the house num­ber is all that re­mains as a fright­en­ing re­minder that their homes could suf­fer the same fate. The road at Lengua Road near Light Pole 19 is al­so bad­ly dam­aged and al­most im­pass­able to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic. Res­i­dent Robin Singh said, “We are ask­ing the gov­ern­ment of T&T, es­pe­cial­ly Min­is­ter of Works, Mr Ro­han Sinanan to come and have a look at this prob­lem here that is caus­ing hav­oc to sev­en hous­es and the Moru­ga to Princes Town Traf­fic.”

He said that they staged a fiery protest three years ago and con­tin­ue plead­ing to the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties for help but to date no sub­stan­tial works have been done to ad­dress the prob­lem. He said ear­li­er this year a min­is­te­r­i­al team com­pris­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and then MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis vis­it­ed and as­sured them that they would re­pair the land­slip and build a re­tain­ing wall be­fore the rainy sea­son. How­ev­er, noth­ing was done.

Mean­while, he said the land­slip con­tin­ues to wreak hav­oc in their lives. “Two oth­er hous­es down there the peo­ple have to evac­u­ate. The land is push­ing their hous­es away and it is pulling our hous­es down.” He said the Works De­part­ment in Princes Town did a sur­vey of this land­slip and rec­om­mend­ed the con­struc­tion of two re­tain­ing walls.

He said the land­slip is un­der­min­ing the home of his nephew, Daren Singh. “It cave-in un­der­neath about 10 to 12 feet al­ready, and the house crack­ing up se­vere­ly. Singh said he has many sleep­less nights be­cause he is afraid that his house could col­lapse at any time.

“My porch crack, my yard move. The whole half of the house split. The house un­der­mine,” said Singh who took more than ten years to build his home.

Bis­soon­dayia Seecha­ran fond­ly called Maya com­plained that she has to pass through her neigh­bour’s prop­er­ty to get to her home be­cause of land ero­sion. She said the dirt and rub­ble from the house that col­lapsed were com­ing down in­to her prop­er­ty. “I don’t know what to do. When I go to sleep I say the rub­ble com­ing down, now, not on my house. All I want is to see how fast they could do it and I could get my place to pass.”

Robin Singh ap­pealed, “We here once again plead­ing with the gov­ern­ment to give us one form of as­sis­tance. Please we are beg­ging you, times are hard.

We can­not af­ford to build a house again and we are hop­ing that you take us very se­ri­ous­ly and give us some as­sis­tance.

Table­land/Moru­ga MP Michelle Ben­jamin said the land be­gan erod­ing in 2015 and in 2019 the Min­istry of Works did some work but it was suf­fi­cient. Claim­ing that a wa­ter leak was al­so con­tributed to the land­slip, she said, “The gov­ern­ment is aware of the sit­u­a­tion and I am here plead­ing for the home­own­ers.

Aside from the land­slip, this is about sav­ing homes. Times are hard, peo­ple can­not af­ford to re­build.” At­tempts to reach Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan on his cell­phone were un­suc­cess­ful.