RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Protest fires raged in Bar­rack­pore yes­ter­day with UNC and PNM politi­cians fac­ing equal heat from the an­gry res­i­dents.

How­ev­er, even as the res­i­dents were mount­ing fiery block­ades in three new ar­eas along Rees Road, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works Ritchie Sookhai sought to quell the tem­pers by promis­ing that road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion will be­gin next week Mon­day.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Sookhai ex­plained that land­slips along Pa­poirie Road and Pe­nal Rock Road cou­pled with de­fects from wa­ter­lines had af­fect­ed the road sta­bil­i­ty.

“The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is aware of the chal­lenges,” he said, not­ing that a de­tailed as­sess­ment of the road was done last month.

He said the Min­istry has de­vel­oped a plan of ac­tion to un­der­take sec­tion­al strength­en­ing, road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, road­side drainage and side­walk re­pairs.

“The High­ways Di­vi­sion has al­ready im­ple­ment­ed an im­me­di­ate and medi­um-term road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plan. In the first in­stance, util­is­ing in-house re­sources, the Min­istry has been un­der­tak­ing pe­ri­od­ic patch­ing works along the road­way to main­tain con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” he ex­plained.

Yes­ter­day, res­i­dents had threat­ened to boy­cott taxi dri­vers, hard­ware own­ers and politi­cians who did not sup­port their protests.

Frus­trat­ed by the lack of ac­tion on crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture re­pairs, the vil­lagers con­front­ed Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles, lam­bast­ing him for a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Charles said he had raised the mat­ter re­peat­ed­ly with the gov­ern­ment but had re­ceived no as­sis­tance.

“Re­peat­ed re­quests to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port as far back as 2020 have gone unan­swered and no hope ap­pears in sight. The is­sue of land­slips and ever-present pot­holes in Na­pari­ma has been raised re­peat­ed­ly in Par­lia­ment—all to no avail,” he said.

He asked why $3.4 mil­lion was wast­ed on the re­cent Cari­com crime talks when the monies could have been used to fix roads.

Dur­ing the protests, po­lice of­fi­cers were de­ployed but no one was ar­rest­ed.

Naz Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the Rees Road Sports Club and man­ag­er of the Bar­rack­pore AS­JA Pri­ma­ry School, said the roads have long been ne­glect­ed.

“Peo­ple are fed up and frus­trat­ed. This road has not been re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed in three decades,” he said.

“They say they have every­thing to start fix­ing the road since Jan­u­ary, but six months lat­er we can­not get grav­el on the road. I am not afraid to say that this is a strong UNC area, but yet still be­tween 2010 and 2015, when the UNC was in pow­er, this road was nev­er paved!”

Mo­hammed con­tin­ued: “Busi­ness has been af­fect­ed, and stu­dents and re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions are all af­fect­ed. If some­one has a heart at­tack here and an am­bu­lance needs to reach them, by the time the am­bu­lance ar­rives, they are dead!”

In an ap­peal for sol­i­dar­i­ty, he added: “Taxi dri­vers who do not sup­port us, we are ask­ing vil­lagers to boy­cott them.”

He ex­plained that the di­lap­i­dat­ed state of the roads has al­so had neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed farm­ers and busi­ness own­ers.

Steve Ali, a live­stock farmer from Don Miguel Road, San Juan, com­plained about the dam­age to his ve­hi­cles.

“Every week, I have to trav­el from the north to Bar­rack­pore to tend to my an­i­mals. But these roads are wreak­ing hav­oc on my ve­hi­cle. The au­thor­i­ties seem in­dif­fer­ent to the needs of the peo­ple. We are fed up. We want some­thing done now,” he said.

“The roads are so bad, how are the po­lice go­ing to ap­pre­hend crim­i­nals? We are pay­ing the gov­ern­ment’s salary, so why are they ne­glect­ing our needs?” he asked.

Yes­ter­day was the sec­ond day of protests and res­i­dents say they will not stop un­less they see ac­tu­al work be­ing done.