RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite as­sur­ances from Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan that re­con­struc­tion of the per­ma­nent Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road would com­mence in six weeks, an­gry taxi dri­vers downed tools on Fri­day, stag­ing protests in Ma­yaro and leav­ing com­muters strand­ed.

The taxi dri­vers, who work the San­gre Grande/Ma­yaro route, ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the di­lap­i­dat­ed state of the tem­po­rary Man­zanil­la By­pass Road and the gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to ful­fil its promis­es.

On Fri­day morn­ing at the junc­tion of Pe­ter Hill Trace, the taxi dri­vers staged a plac­ard demon­stra­tion to voice their griev­ances.

Joel Leza­ma, one of the protest­ing dri­vers said, "Last week the Kiss truck get stick. We are fed up. We could hard­ly buy food to eat be­cause the lit­tle mon­ey we have has to go to fix our sus­pen­sion in the car. Every week we are spend­ing mon­ey to fix the car."

An­oth­er dri­ver An­cil Oliv­er said not enough is be­ing done to re­pair the tem­po­rary by­pass road and they were not pre­pared to spend more mon­ey every week on ve­hi­cle main­te­nance.

Min­is­ter Sinanan had pre­vi­ous­ly in­formed the taxi dri­vers that week­ly main­te­nance would be car­ried out on the tem­po­rary by­pass road.

How­ev­er, the dri­vers claimed that the min­is­ter had not fol­lowed through on his promis­es, lead­ing to fi­nan­cial strain due to fre­quent ve­hi­cle main­te­nance caused by the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions.

On Sun­day, Min­is­ter Sinanan, ap­pealed for pa­tience, re­as­sur­ing res­i­dents that the per­ma­nent road con­struc­tion will be­gin by Au­gust.

He ex­plained that the gov­ern­ment had opt­ed to build a tem­po­rary by­pass in­stead of clos­ing off the road and in­con­ve­nienc­ing thou­sands of peo­ple.

Sinanan high­light­ed the chal­lenges in the area, stat­ing, "It is a very sen­si­tive area, and we know the by­pass road can­not stand up to the weath­er, which is why we are work­ing with dif­fer­ent agen­cies such as the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA). It is not just about the road. It is about coastal ero­sion on one side and pro­tect­ing the swamp on the oth­er side." He em­pha­sized the need to pro­tect both the coastal area and the Nar­i­va Swamp, a vast ex­panse cov­er­ing 235,000 acres.

Re­gard­ing the con­struc­tion of the per­ma­nent road, Min­is­ter Sinanan pro­vid­ed an up­date on the up­com­ing phas­es.

He said: "The ten­der of phase one of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road, which in­volves the re­moval of ma­te­r­i­al from the road, will start in a month. Next week, five more pack­ages will go out, and with­in the next six weeks, you will see the start of the re­build­ing of the new road."

Sinanan al­so dis­missed a call from Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray to use pe­tro­le­um-based binders on the road, ex­plain­ing that it would ad­verse­ly af­fect the swamp, mak­ing it an un­vi­able op­tion.

When ques­tioned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of seek­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­per­tise for the road works, Min­is­ter Sinanan ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the lo­cal com­pe­tence avail­able.

He men­tioned that the PURE Unit re­spon­si­ble for the road was col­lab­o­rat­ing with The Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, the EMA, and the IMA, en­sur­ing ac­cess to any nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion.

As the taxi dri­vers' protest con­tin­ues, com­muters from San­gre Grande were left strand­ed and frus­trat­ed with many un­able to go to school and work. Guardian Me­dia will up­date this sto­ry as it un­folds.