Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) work­ers toiled late in­to Thurs­day night re­pair­ing a ma­jor pot­hole along the South­ern Main Road in South Oropouche.

This fol­lowed protest ac­tion the day be­fore by res­i­dents who claimed they could “catch fish” in the huge pot­hole.

Re­pairs to the road start­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia he would hold WASA man­agers to ac­count when­ev­er pro­to­cols for restora­tive works are not fol­lowed.

In the past, WASA has come un­der pub­lic con­dem­na­tion for dig­ging up new­ly paved roads to re­pair leaks and not do­ing restora­tion work af­ter­wards.

“I was in­formed that be­cause of a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the dis­trict lev­el, the area man­ag­er from WASA did not at­tend to the mat­ter with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism ex­pect­ed,” Gon­za­les said.

“There is in place a ro­bust sys­tem to ad­dress leaks and road restora­tion ex­pe­di­tious­ly. I will re­quest the board to hold man­agers to ac­count when they ne­glect to fol­low ap­proved pro­to­cols.”

Dur­ing the protests on Wednes­day, res­i­dents pre­tend­ed to fish in the pot­hole to show its size and depth. They al­so used a buck­et to bail out wa­ter from the pot­hole to show the vol­ume of wa­ter that ac­cu­mu­lates when­ev­er it rains. 

Last June 22, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told Par­lia­ment a leak­ing wa­ter line on the op­po­site side of the road re­sult­ed in sat­u­ra­tion of the road and the em­bank­ment. He said the road was re­paired by WASA and road re­pair work in that area was card­ed for the end of June. How­ev­er, that was nev­er done, prompt­ing the protests on Wednes­day.