Res­i­dents of La For­tune Pluck Road, San Fran­cique, are again ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to fix their road, which is now im­pass­able and pos­es a threat to 15 hous­es, one of which is on the verge of col­lapse.

This comes just two months af­ter Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan toured the area and as­sured res­i­dents that the min­istry is work­ing on get­ting the road re­paired.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on the road at San­ta Ce­celia Junc­tion yes­ter­day, a heavy down­pour saw wa­ter gush­ing in­to the mid­dle of the sunken road, trans­form­ing it in­to a pond.

Oropouche West MP Dave Tan­coo claimed Sinanan and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi vis­it­ed the res­i­dents in re­cent months “in se­cret”, with­out in­form­ing him or the coun­cil­lor.

He, how­ev­er, dis­missed their vis­it as noth­ing more than an at­tempt to “fool the res­i­dents.”

“It is time now for us to take this protest to the Gov­ern­ment be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is not com­ing here ex­cept to ma­m­aguy peo­ple. The next stage is com­ing, we are to­tal­ly fed-up,” he said.

Tan­coo al­so claimed the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment wrote to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion sug­gest­ing that one of the af­fect­ed hous­es be deemed as a ru­inous struc­ture.

He ex­plained that a ru­inous struc­ture means the cor­po­ra­tion and the min­istry could in­struct the home­own­er to de­stroy the house at their own cost.

Ac­cus­ing the min­istry of try­ing to shirk its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, he said for­tu­nate­ly, the cor­po­ra­tion’s tech­ni­cal team wrote back to the min­istry in June in­di­cat­ing the op­po­site about the house.

“That means that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls back on­to the min­istry. They need to stop hid­ing from their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

Due to nu­mer­ous WASA leaks caused by the land move­ment, Tan­coo said res­i­dents were al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply. An­oth­er prob­lem, he said, is that peo­ple, in­clud­ing school chil­dren, have no trans­port to get to and from their homes.

The Oropouche West MP al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against res­i­dents be­cause they live in a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-con­trolled con­stituen­cy.

Not­ing that fiery protests in the past had failed to trig­ger any ac­tion by the au­thor­i­ties, Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique North coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayrhoo said they de­cid­ed to take a “dis­ci­plined ap­proach” by hold­ing a press con­fer­ence.

“We not go­ing to burn the good road that Ro­han fix for we here. We want to protest in a way that we will not dam­age the road so we will not in­cur any costs, be­cause Ro­han has al­ready let the road fall apart.”

Mayrhoo said the road is im­pass­able to emer­gency ve­hi­cles. Fol­low­ing Min­is­ter Sinanan’s vis­it on May 18, the min­istry stat­ed that it is co­or­di­nat­ing an over­all re­sponse via three di­vi­sions, the High­ways Di­vi­sion, PURE and the Bridges, Land­slips and Traf­fic Man­age­ment Unit (BLT).

Un­der the BLT Land­slip re­pair Pro­gramme Phase 2A, the min­istry said ap­proval had been re­ceived to award con­tracts to be­gin con­struc­tion works on five sig­nif­i­cant land­slips in the ar­eas.

The Min­is­ter was quot­ed as say­ing, “While mem­bers of the La For­tune Pluck Road com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ue to clam­our for im­me­di­ate ac­tion, the nec­es­sary steps to iden­ti­fy, plan, in­ves­ti­gate, de­sign and award con­tracts for the re­pair of land­slips in the area are be­ing tak­en.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Works Min­istry for a sta­tus up­date on the works yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial said no up­date was avail­able at the time.