Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

As parts of the world ob­serve Na­tion­al Pot­hole Day on Jan­u­ary 15th, some cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the nu­mer­ous pot­holes on the na­tion’s road­ways.

Pot­hole Day was first recog­nised in the Unit­ed King­dom in 2018 to high­light the chal­lenges faced by mo­torists and cit­i­zens.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the streets of Port-of-Spain and Aranguez, where sev­er­al mo­torists shared that they had re­cent­ly spent hun­dreds of dol­lars on ve­hi­cle re­pairs caused by pot­holes.

Ken­ton Joseph, of Wood­brook, re­vealed he spent over $1,000 re­pair­ing his car af­ter hit­ting a pot­hole on Char­lotte Street near the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. De­spite the road be­ing re­cent­ly re­paired, he still had to bear the ex­pense.

“As I was go­ing up Char­lotte Street, bam! I dropped in­to a hole. I didn’t even see the hole at night. I just dropped in­to it. I heard the tyre burst and the air es­cap­ing… I had to get the tyre re­paired and change the rim. It cost close to $800 for the orig­i­nal rim, and tyre re­pairs cost me more than $100, so at the end of the day, it cost $1,000,” he said.

Joseph added:

“We have prob­a­bly the last and on­ly re­main­ing pitch lake in the world. I think our roads should be a lot bet­ter. What I see is they on­ly re­pair the roads when there’s a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose— for ex­am­ple, elec­tions or Car­ni­val com­ing up. But gen­er­al­ly, they just don’t seem to care about the dri­ving pub­lic or reg­u­lar road main­te­nance in Trinidad. We are pay­ing tax­es to have the roads prop­er­ly main­tained, so when these things hap­pen, who can I go to for com­pen­sa­tion for bad­ly main­tained roads?”

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to Gon­za­les as he was dri­ving along White Street in Wood­brook, which was rid­dled with pot­holes.

Mean­while, Josi­ah Daniel from Port-of-Spain said he re­cent­ly changed a tyre due to a pot­hole in Cen­tral Trinidad. The re­pair cost him $750. He com­ment­ed that au­thor­i­ties are not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress­ing the is­sue, as pot­holes of­ten reap­pear soon af­ter re­pairs.

Nicole, a res­i­dent of Laven­tille, shared that she and her neigh­bours fre­quent­ly deal with pot­hole-re­lat­ed prob­lems. She said, “I find we’re a coun­try with re­sources for that [good roads]… we shouldn’t have any pot­holes.”

An Aranguez res­i­dent re­port­ed that a pot­hole dam­aged his tyre a month ago, cost­ing him $1,000. When asked what mes­sage he had for the au­thor­i­ties, he said, “The cit­i­zens are feel­ing it, so if they could do some­thing to ad­dress that, it would be bet­ter.”

“I think we’re pay­ing a road tax, and they’re sup­posed to be us­ing that to re­pair pot­holes,” said an El So­cor­ro res­i­dent. “Any­where you dri­ve, it’s pot­holes.”

A San Juan res­i­dent added that she re­cent­ly had to re­place her shocks due to a pot­hole. Her ac­quain­tance re­marked:

“I think it’s ridicu­lous be­cause Trinidad has enough mon­ey to fix pot­holes… we on­ly get things fixed when it’s time for vot­ing. Af­ter that, noth­ing. You dam­age your car, it costs you mon­ey, you have bro­ken an­kles, et cetera… they have to fix the pot­holes, and we have to speak up.”

Au­to­mo­tive tech­ni­cian and own­er of Un­der D’ Man­go Tree Tuner Ltd, Sean David Joseph, not­ed that he re­ceives at least three cus­tomers week­ly with car sus­pen­sion is­sues linked to pot­holes.

“Full sus­pen­sion on a Navara, for ex­am­ple, could range from $4,000 on the low end to $6,000, and that is with­out orig­i­nal parts. If we’re talk­ing orig­i­nal parts, it could go up to $10,000. On the Navara and the Ti­i­da, it could go up to about $7,000 in parts,” he ex­plained.

Joseph ad­vised mo­torists to watch for signs of pot­hole-re­lat­ed dam­age.

“The first thing you will no­tice is that the ve­hi­cle is not as sta­ble as it should be. For in­stance, you're dri­ving the ve­hi­cle, and nor­mal­ly it will dri­ve straight, but you may no­tice that it is veer­ing to the side that was hit— that’s one of the signs. An­oth­er sign is noise… you may no­tice a noise or a dip. If the shock ac­tu­al­ly bursts, you will no­tice a dip in your ve­hi­cle,” he said.

He urged dri­vers to have their ve­hi­cles checked prompt­ly.

“I would rec­om­mend that the first thing you do af­ter hit­ting a pot­hole is to get an as­sess­ment of the dam­age done to your ve­hi­cle. When peo­ple con­tin­ue dri­ving with dam­aged parts, it could cause ac­ci­dents or even fa­tal­i­ties. If the ve­hi­cle isn’t prop­er­ly con­trolled, some­thing could hap­pen, and some­one could get killed. So, dri­ve cau­tious­ly, be aware of your sur­round­ings, and take care of your ve­hi­cle. Your ve­hi­cle will take care of you if you take care of it.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan, and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Faris Al-Rawi, for com­ments on cit­i­zens’ com­plaints about pot­holes. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse up to press time.