SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Just weeks be­fore vot­ers head to the polls, a surge of road paving is un­der­way across Trinidad—turn­ing pot­hole-rid­dled streets in­to fresh strips of as­phalt al­most overnight.

Af­ter months and even years of ne­glect, and as mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans have grown frus­trat­ed with nav­i­gat­ing around pot­holes and de­pres­sions, roads are fi­nal­ly be­ing resur­faced. Mil­lions of dol­lars are be­ing spent.

The pun­gent scent of fresh as­phalt clung to the air on St Joseph Road in Ari­ma last week when the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed. For res­i­dents like Su­san De Touche, who wait­ed years for her street in the East­ern Bor­ough to be fixed, the tim­ing feels sus­pi­cious.

Three weeks ago, De Touche faced a shock­er when heavy ma­chin­ery and a paving crew be­gan grad­ing the quar­ter-mile-long road in prepa­ra­tion for it to be re-lay­ered with as­phalt.

The road, used dai­ly by pedes­tri­ans, maxi taxi dri­vers and mo­torists, is one of the busiest streets in the Ari­ma Bor­ough, and peo­ple have grown frus­trat­ed with nav­i­gat­ing around pock­ets of pot­holes and de­pres­sions.

With the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion draw­ing clos­er, the road was resur­faced in two days.

St Joseph Road is the on­ly street that has been paved in the busy com­mer­cial cen­tre and one of many roads in the East that were re­cent­ly resur­faced to en­tice vot­ers.

“I asked the con­trac­tor how many years this road wasn’t paved, and he told me 34 years,” De Touche said. “Imag­ine that.”

But De Touche ad­mit­ted, “On our side, it wasn’t too bad. It have (roads) by the Ari­ma Di­al, which could do with a lit­tle paving be­cause it’s re­al­ly bumpy.”

She said any­one cross­ing these roads can eas­i­ly fall, as they are un­even.

“There is a lot of de­pres­sion.”

Oth­er roads across the coun­try are hasti­ly be­ing paved to beat the elec­tion date.

One res­i­dent de­scribed it as a “paving fren­zy sweep­ing the land”.

But while the wait for a prop­er road has been long for De Touche and oth­er res­i­dents, she was un­sure if it would en­cour­age her to vote.

Road paving dur­ing elec­tions has be­come a po­lit­i­cal­ly charged is­sue. Over the years, it has be­come a pat­tern for roads to be resur­faced just be­fore elec­tion day.

Last week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ob­tain a $250 mil­lion loan from Sco­tia­bank for road works just ahead of the elec­tion.

Sought by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the loan was in the process of be­ing ex­e­cut­ed with funds due to be dis­bursed to pay for the Pro­gramme of Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) ap­proved road­works that have been com­plet­ed and are on­go­ing.

She said the PNM was rush­ing to pave roads at break­neck speed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, in an at­tempt to sway vot­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said every one of the road paving con­tracts will be re­port­ed to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor. She al­so is­sued a warn­ing to of­fi­cials of PURE to tread care­ful­ly.

On Mon­day, Curepe to Ch­agua­nas maxi taxi dri­vers raised an is­sue with the re­cent paving of one side of the road from bustling Curepe Junc­tion along the South­ern Main Road. The paving was cut off at the cor­ner of Clif­ford Street, a short dis­tance from the junc­tion.

Stand­ing on Have­lock Street, where the dri­vers ply their trade, maxi taxi dri­ver An­tho­ny Mitchell said it was the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain the roads when they are vot­ed in­to of­fice.

In­stead, he said the roads are fixed most­ly at elec­tion time.

“It doh take ten years to fix a road,” Mitchell said.

Asked what may have led to the con­trac­tor paving half of the road, Mitchell re­spond­ed, “Maybe the con­trac­tor on­ly get half of the mon­ey.”

Mitchell said the road, which had be­come an eye­sore, was in dire need of repaving.

While maxi taxi dri­ver Shane Alexan­der was thank­ful for the repaved road, he felt the job should have been com­plet­ed.

“If they could come and fin­ish the next half, it would be much bet­ter. That is all the Gov­ern­ment has to do in this coun­try: when they start some­thing, fin­ish it.”

At Ama­zon Road, Aripo, Rawle Cadet said their road was long over­due for paving.

In the lead-up to the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion, the road was re-sheet­ed.

For the past five years, he said, the road had been left in a de­plorable state.

“Trucks trans­port­ing ag­gre­gate from the Waller­field quar­ries and WASA’s con­stant dig­ging up of the road to re­pair leaks de­stroyed the road. Some ar­eas had gi­ant-sized pot­holes. Yuh does know when it’s elec­tion; we got the road paved last Mon­day,” said Cadet, who sells jars of hon­ey in front of his home.

The work was done in a jiffy.

“That is a politi­cian’s strat­e­gy. The pop­u­la­tion gets ac­cus­tomed to see­ing roads hasti­ly be­ing paved dur­ing cam­paign­ing.”

Cadet, 66, said sev­er­al bad roads in Aripo were left un­touched.

He ques­tioned the tim­ing of the paving at the height of cam­paign­ing, stat­ing it would on­ly be per­ceived as an elec­tion gim­mick.

At Rail­way Road, pop­u­lar­ly called the Train­line in Guaico, paving was in full swing.

Res­i­dent Girlie Ramdeen said un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment the road was de­vel­oped. Now it’s be­ing repaved as a link road to San­gre Grande. She said the road start­ed to de­te­ri­o­rate be­cause of the weight of the heavy trucks.

Ramdeen said the con­trac­tor has been push­ing work as plans are afoot to com­mis­sion the road be­fore the elec­torate goes to the polls.

Res­i­dent and ven­dor Matthew Man­ick said the road would bring cus­tomers to his busi­ness.

“It would do us some good,” Man­ick said.

In the To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy it was ob­served that sev­er­al ar­eas along the To­co Main Road had been grad­ed for repaving, and patch­ing had been com­plet­ed in many side streets in the San­gre Grande dis­trict.