Sascha Wil­son

Hours af­ter Mara­bel­la res­i­dents staged a plac­ard demon­stra­tion on Wednes­day over the de­plorable con­di­tion of the road caused by a leak­ing WASA line, it was re­paired.

Chant­i­ng “We want we road fix,” the res­i­dents called on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to fix the leak and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to re­pair the af­fect­ed area at Ma­haraj Road, near Tarou­ba junc­tion.

They com­plained that the large pot­holes were a dan­ger to road users, were dam­ag­ing their ve­hi­cles and al­so in­con­ve­nienc­ing them.

Shane Ba­hadur, who has been liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty for 41 years, com­plained that he had re­port­ed the leak to WASA since Oc­to­ber 15.

“Every time I call WASA, they say they have no re­sources, they have no equip­ment,” he said.

In the mean­time, he said res­i­dents and road users are be­ing in­con­ve­nienced.

“When the trucks (con­tain­er) pass here in the morn­ing and the con­tain­ers drop in that hole, it shake the whole house be­cause they can’t brakes it, they are big ve­hi­cles and they heavy. When they com­ing out all five o’clock in the morn­ing and they drop in this hole, the whole house shak­ing. Every­body have to wake up in the house,” he lament­ed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Tr­isha Ba­hadur, said the leak must be re­paired be­fore the road could be fixed.

“It is very dis­turb­ing to be pass­ing through here with your ve­hi­cle. Nor­mal­ly, if any­thing is to hap­pen with your ve­hi­cle or any parts, you have to take out mon­ey from your own pock­ets to fix it. So all we need, we ask­ing for, is to fix the leak and to fix the road,” she said.

The de­plorable con­di­tion of the road, she added, was al­so cre­at­ing traf­fic jams dai­ly.

Je­sus Sorzana, who owns a veg­etable and fruit stall on the side of the road near the pot­holes, said his busi­ness was be­ing af­fect­ed.

“It af­fect­ing the sales… the place un­tidy, peo­ple splash­ing wa­ter, if you come out you could get splash up.”

Mara­bel­la South/Vista­bel­la coun­cil­lor Mar­cus Gird­harie said the line be­gan leak­ing about four months ago. While he and res­i­dents had re­port­ed the leak to WASA, he said they kept get­ting a runaround.

“We’ve been giv­en ex­cus­es that equip­ment is down. Work­ers from WASA don’t want to be work­ing be­cause they not pay­ing over­time,” he said.

How­ev­er, Gird­harie com­plained that hun­dreds of ve­hi­cles tra­verse the road, which is be­tween the South­ern Main Road and San Fer­nan­do By­pass. While he had brought the mat­ter up in coun­cil meet­ings at San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, he said the lo­cal gov­ern­ment body is on­ly re­spon­si­ble for mi­nor roads and drains while ma­jor roads fall un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

The leak was lat­er re­paired by WASA. How­ev­er, WASA Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Daniel Plen­ty said the re­pair work on the three-quar­ter-inch ser­vice line was long sched­uled for Wednes­day and was not prompt­ed by the protest.