Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Scores of res­i­dents and farm­ers in Begesse Street, off River­side Road, Rio Claro, are ur­gent­ly call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to re­pair a land­slip that is threat­en­ing to cut them off com­plete­ly.

Res­i­dents claim that their pleas for as­sis­tance over the last three years have fall­en on deaf ears, and now they are fear­ful for their safe­ty and liveli­hoods and are with­out ac­cess to es­sen­tial ser­vices like garbage col­lec­tion.

Res­i­dent Jha­groo “Poya” Ram­roop said with more than 12 homes and 15 farm­ers af­fect­ed, they con­struct­ed a nar­row grav­el path­way on the edge of the land­slip so ve­hi­cles could pass, but it was dan­ger­ous.

He said re­cent­ly they had to as­sist a young dri­ver af­ter his ve­hi­cle went over the edge. Ram­roop said on Thurs­day work­ers erect­ed a bam­boo bar­ri­er and cau­tion tape to cor­don off the land­slip.

De­spite the dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, he said, they still passed with their ve­hi­cles be­cause it was the on­ly ac­cess to and from their homes.

“We will like to ask for the road to fix. I will be very thank­ful; the vil­lagers will be very thank­ful for the road to fix and the farm­ers al­so too,” plead­ed Ram­roop.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, In­dra Ram­char­i­tar, 57, a heart pa­tient, said she was afraid that the road would be com­plete­ly cut off.

“I is a per­son does get very sick with my heart. In case an am­bu­lance have to come in here, it will be very hard to come in here,” she said.

“If you sick and you can’t come out no way, you have to stay in the back there and die.”

Har­ri­lal Ramb­ha­jan, a farmer, com­plained that the au­thor­i­ties should have act­ed be­fore the road de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to this lev­el. “The great­est fear is that when this road be­comes im­pass­able, the res­i­dents here won’t have ac­cess to noth­ing. They won’t be able to come out, nei­ther to go in, no emer­gency ve­hi­cle will be able to pass here to as­sist the res­i­dents in­side here. Let’s say that some­thing hap­pens in­side here and we need as­sis­tance from some emer­gency re­sponse. What will hap­pen here? We might have to die in­side here.”

Farmer Bal­li­ram Su­dama, 81, who does not live in the com­mu­ni­ty, com­plained that for the past two weeks, he has been un­able to ac­cess his gar­den.

“It af­fect­ing me very, very bad,” he lament­ed, adding, “Right now I have fig to cut, and I can’t go, through the bad road.”

In re­sponse, Rio Claro South/Cat’s Hill coun­cil­lor David Law said the land­slip de­vel­oped about three months ago, but he un­der­stood the res­i­dents’ anx­i­ety. As­sur­ing they are work­ing on try­ing to fix the road as soon as pos­si­ble, he said the en­gi­neer and the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment have pre­pared a re­vised de­tailed es­ti­mate, in­clud­ing equip­ment and ma­te­r­i­al, for ur­gent works.

In a state­ment, Ma­yaro MP Wil­fred Nicholas Mor­ris as­sured res­i­dents and farm­ers that they would fix the land­slip.

“To all res­i­dents, your gov­ern­ment has your back,” he said. Ear­li­er this week, when con­di­tions in­ten­si­fied, he said, a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween him­self, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion led by chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er, coun­cil­lor David Law and my­self en­gaged Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen.

“The min­is­ter has giv­en her as­sur­ance of a speedy rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prob­lem. En­gi­neers have been work­ing to de­vel­op a cost­ing, scope of works and oth­er key el­e­ments need­ed to de­liv­er on this project.”