Joshua Seemu­n­gal

As one of the most pop­u­lar shop­ping des­ti­na­tions in the deep south, the heart of Point Fortin is typ­i­cal­ly pump­ing with ac­tiv­i­ty around Christ­mas time, but this past Christ­mas, main­ly be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, busi­ness was a bit rougher than usu­al.

The sur­face of the Point Fortin Main Road, run­ning di­rect­ly through the cen­tre, was rougher than usu­al too.

A lot rougher, ac­cord­ing to Mrs Kalliecha­ran, own­er of the Kalliecha­ran’s fran­chise.

“This start­ed in late Oc­to­ber when they came and they scraped the road. It car­ried on un­til No­vem­ber, then we were told WASA has to change some lines and it will be fin­ished by De­cem­ber 10th. It is the 14th, and look at the con­di­tion of the roads,” Mrs Kalliecha­ran told us.

In the 47 years, Kalliecha­ran’s been in Point Fortin, she’s nev­er seen the roads in such poor con­di­tion.

In fact, in the last five to six years, the busi­ness own­er claimed, the roads from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin, all the way to Ce­dros, have been the worst in the coun­try.

“It has af­fect­ed my busi­ness, my ve­hi­cles and my health. To dri­ve on a road like this - it shakes me up by the time I get home,” she said, vis­i­bly up­set, be­fore adding, “Mr Ro­han Sinanan, please we are ask­ing you, spend some time in the deep south, es­pe­cial­ly Point Fortin. Come and see what’s hap­pen­ing here.”

A short dis­tance away from Kalliecha­ran’s, near the round­about, a taxi dri­ver ob­served the cam­era and asked to share his views.

Like Mrs Kalliecha­ran, he said, the road is af­fect­ing his pock­et.

Be­fore the road was dug up by WASA, he made three trips per day, at least.

That be­came one.

“As you take your time to go through the rough road, the light turns red again. And then, you have to take your time again, so the light could change two to three times be­fore you cross (the in­ter­sec­tion),” he said.

“The sus­pen­sion bush­ings in the cra­dle ‘bussing’ be­cause of the pot­holes, and when that hap­pens, the tire starts to cut, and then the po­lice take away points be­cause you have a bad tire on your car,” he added.

It would not be un­til late Jan­u­ary that the road was repaved af­ter WASA fi­nal­ly re­paired pipes.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween WASA and the Min­istry of Works, as well as re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, has long been a tense, com­pli­cat­ed one.

In Jan­u­ary, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan claimed in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia that WASA’s age­ing in­fra­struc­ture was re­spon­si­ble for 90 per cent of all road prob­lems.

Trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer and se­nior lec­tur­er at UWI Dr Trevor Townsend agreed that WASA’s in­fra­struc­ture is a ma­jor cause of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions.

“If you dri­ve on a dry day, check your pot­holes and see how many of the pot­holes have wa­ter in them be­cause those pot­holes are be­ing cre­at­ed where there is ei­ther a leak­ing valve or a leak­ing pipe, or a house­hold con­nec­tion that was made and not prop­er­ly re-in­stat­ed,” Townsend said.

And, in many in­stances, the road­way isn’t prop­er­ly re-in­stat­ed or re-con­sti­tut­ed ei­ther, he said, lead­ing to a poor foun­da­tion where the base and sub-base (low­er sec­tions) are com­pro­mised, caus­ing the road’s sur­face to fail.

Oth­er fac­tors like the pres­ence of heavy ve­hi­cles and poor drainage fur­ther dam­age the sur­face and oth­er lay­ers of the road, he added.

“We’ve talked about hav­ing a com­mit­tee to deal with util­i­ty re­pairs and stuff like that, but that was since I was in the min­istry in the 70s or 80s. We are now in the year 2021, and we are not see­ing any im­pact of that what­so­ev­er,” Townsend lament­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to JCC pres­i­dent and civ­il en­gi­neer Fazir Khan, the Min­istry of Works and WASA have been go­ing back and forth for decades.

He said while the Min­istry of Works of­ten claims WASA leaks cause roads to de­te­ri­o­rate through leak­ing pipes and valves, WASA of­ten claims, in re­sponse, that many roads are not built cor­rect­ly, caus­ing them to slip, in turn, break­ing its pipes.

Both Townsend and Khan agreed that with­out prop­er over­sight and prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween WASA and the Min­istry of Works over projects, there is a long-stand­ing cycli­cal is­sue.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the is­sue, there are al­so ge­o­log­i­cal fac­tors in­volved, ac­cord­ing to Khan.

While north­ern Trinidad tends to have good, hard foun­da­tion ma­te­r­i­al to build roads on, Cen­tral and South­ern Trinidad isn’t so for­tu­nate, he said.

“The Ca­roni plains have some of the worst clays in the world - and by worst clays, en­gi­neers mean high­ly-sen­si­tive clays - that swell with wa­ter. While, in the dry sea­son, they crack up,” Khan said.

Ac­cord­ing to Khan, a far more proac­tive ap­proach needs to be adopt­ed in deal­ing with the is­sues fac­ing WASA, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Civ­il en­gi­neer Lacey Williams be­lieves the WASA/Min­istry of Works is­sue will con­tin­ue as long as there is un­planned road­way de­vel­op­ment.

Can it be fixed? Per­haps, he said, but with great ef­fort.

He said the two agen­cies ought to come to­geth­er to work out a means by which they can se­cure pipelines while roads are un­der con­struc­tion.

He al­so be­lieved WASA should in­vest in a project to prop­er­ly map its pipelines.

In part four of Pot­hole Par­adise, we will ex­am­ine the lack of road main­te­nance, ques­tions about the stan­dard of road en­gi­neer­ing, and the role da­ta must play in the road for­ward.