KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In the qui­et com­mu­ni­ties of Lengua/In­di­an Walk, it is not just the bro­ken roads that frus­trate the res­i­dents—it is the feel­ing of be­ing for­got­ten. While Gov­ern­ment has an­nounced a $210 mil­lion plan to re­ha­bil­i­tate sec­ondary roads in 2025, many in the area re­main scep­ti­cal that these promised im­prove­ments will ever reach their crum­bling streets.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced 100 road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects for 2025. This comes af­ter 150 projects were ini­ti­at­ed in 2024 un­der the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE), with 85 com­plet­ed so far. While the num­bers sound promis­ing, Lengua/In­di­an Walk res­i­dents said the promis­es are not new.

As An­nel Coop­er walked along Samuel Coop­er Road in Fifth Com­pa­ny, she point­ed out the large pot­holes and wide cracks in the as­phalt that make it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for her hus­band to dri­ve her to her moth­er’s house.

“It is a good thing if it ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens,” Coop­er said of the promised road­works. “But say­ing one thing and do­ing it are two dif­fer­ent things. They al­ways say a lot of things lead­ing up to the bud­get and elec­tions, then af­ter that, noth­ing hap­pens.”

Coop­er claimed her road has not seen prop­er paving in 15 years, on­ly a few patch jobs here and there. De­spite their protests, res­i­dents said, they have been left to deal with dan­ger­ous roads that are in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate. They added some taxi dri­vers would not even take pas­sen­gers to their homes due to the poor con­di­tions. They said a few res­i­dents helped by dri­ving chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty to school.

Along Lengua Road in In­di­an Walk, Lloyd Bridge­lal ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that the once-ma­jor thor­ough­fare had been vir­tu­al­ly cut off by a land­slip that oc­curred over five years ago. He said while there were on­go­ing re­pairs, new land­slips con­tin­ued to oc­cur, wors­en­ing the al­ready poor con­di­tions.

Bridge­lal’s moth­er lost her home due to the lack of prop­er drainage, and his own house suf­fered se­ri­ous dam­age, forc­ing him to spend thou­sands on re­pairs.

“They are not fix­ing any­thing. You know, just be­fore the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, they sent some peo­ple with an old truck, patched up some things, and it went right back to the same way. It’s all talk,” Bridge­lal said.

Ryan Khan, an­oth­er res­i­dent, agreed, adding that the roads are so bad that many peo­ple need to buy vans just to get around.

“It is a good thing for the com­mu­ni­ties around here be­cause the roads are re­al­ly in a ter­ri­ble state. But the last time we saw any re­al work was when Pe­ter Tay­lor was our MP.”

Khan said el­der­ly res­i­dents had to call taxis just to get to the clin­ic, which is cost­ly. His con­stant trips to the me­chan­ic are a tes­ta­ment to the dam­age these roads do to ve­hi­cles.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan as­sured that Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to fix­ing roads in ar­eas like Lengua/In­di­an Walk. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, he ex­plained that the sec­ondary road al­lo­ca­tion was part of a con­tin­u­ing pro­gramme that be­gan in 2022. Though un­able to pro­vide spe­cif­ic de­tails on how funds will be spent, Sinanan said that over 70 land­slips had been re­paired be­tween Princes Town and Moru­ga, and road paving was on­go­ing.

He said the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to re­pair all roads in T&T, in­clud­ing those in Lengua/In­di­an Walk.