RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les wants to know why road restora­tion was not done on the South­ern Main Road when the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) con­duct­ed re­pairs to a leak months ago, leav­ing gap­ing pot­holes on the road­way.

One pot­hole, large enough to cause con­ges­tion and dis­tress, be­came the cen­tre of at­ten­tion when res­i­dents of Har­ris Vil­lage South Oropouche pre­tend­ed to fish in it to show the size and depth.

Dur­ing a plac­ard protest the res­i­dents used a buck­et to bail out the murky wa­ter, wad­ing through the pot­hole in rub­ber boots as they count­ed the bangs caused by ve­hi­cles con­tin­u­al­ly hit­ting the pot­hole.

Mo­torist Man­ickchan Bridge­mo­hans­ingh said it was caus­ing ve­hic­u­lar dam­age.

Say­ing the pot­hole was just 50 feet away from the new­ly paved Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion, Bridge­mo­han said:”You mean they couldn’t pave this lit­tle area here if they paving across here? We wait­ing for a year and more now. The road is slip­ping here and the wa­ter line is un­der­min­ing the road,” Bridge­mo­hans­ingh re­vealed.

He said the traf­fic con­ges­tion was hor­ren­dous.

Taxi dri­ver Ra­jesh Bhairoo, of Pep­per Vil­lage, said he too was frus­trat­ed.

“My ve­hi­cle is down right now be­cause of the con­di­tion of this road and we need this road fixed im­me­di­ate­ly,” he said. 

Coun­cil­lor for San Fran­cique / Av­o­cat who led the “fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion” said it was un­for­tu­nate that WASA has con­tin­ued to leave the road in a state of dis­re­pair.

“This hole is here for the past year and we have com­plained about it. This is cre­at­ing enor­mous traf­fic through­out the day in the morn­ings and evenings. We don’t have wa­ter and when­ev­er re­pairs are done, they are not do­ing the restora­tion work. That side of the road is cav­ing away be­cause there is an un­der­ground seep­age,” he said.

Mayrhoo said: “I am send­ing a warn­ing that to­day we are do­ing a peace­ful protest but by next week if some­thing isn’t done then it will be fire here,” he said.

He said the Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan had promised to be­gin road re­pairs in the dry sea­son.

“I want to tell him open your win­dow you will see the sun hot so you could re­pair the roads be­cause all you do is promise, promise, promise and they are do­ing noth­ing,” he added. 

MP for Fyz­abad Lack­ram Bo­doe said he wrote to Min­is­ter Sinanan on Jan­u­ary 8th ask­ing him to re­pair the pot­hole close to LP 102 in the vicin­i­ty of the ceme­tery along the South­ern Main Road which was caus­ing mas­sive con­ges­tion.

Bo­doe said the en­tire road lead­ing to Fyz­abad was “in a per­ilous state.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Sinanan who said there is a sched­ule to re­pair roads.

“All roads list­ed un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port are on our list­ing to be ad­dressed based on a for­mu­la and the avail­able fund­ing pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance,” he said.

But when con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said he will in­ves­ti­gate if and why the road was left in a di­lap­i­dat­ed state as there is a sys­tem in place to en­sure there is road restora­tion af­ter leak re­pairs.

“I will have the CEO and the area man­agers in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and if found to be fac­tu­al im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the mat­ter. I won’t com­ment on the fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion of the res­i­dents save to say that I hope they had a good catch giv­en the price of fish in this let­ter sea­son,” Gon­za­les added.