Tem­pers flared and in­sults were hurled at two of­fi­cials of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, af­ter they sat in­side a pot­hole to speak about de­plorable road con­di­tions.

Dressed in a suit and wear­ing rub­ber boots, Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayrhoo laid down a chair and sat in the pot­hole for a me­dia con­fer­ence at Oropouche Junc­tion. SRC chair­man Di­nesh Sankers­ingh sat next to him.

Traf­fic had backed up even be­fore the start of the con­fer­ence. But as the men got ready to talk, an irate pass­er-by in­ter­rupt­ed.

“That mak­ing sense? Be­fore you could fix the pot­hole you sit­ting in it? All you se­ri­ous? Get some ma­te­r­i­al and fix the damn road,” he shout­ed.

But Mayrhoo lashed back, say­ing they were not re­spon­si­ble for fix­ing pot­holes cre­at­ed by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

Mo­torists honked their horns.

One man shout­ed: “Fix the Road! All you caus­ing traf­fic.”

A hand­ful of pro­test­ers who stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the coun­cil­lor be­gan chant­i­ng: “Fix the hole, fix the pot­hole.”

Mayrhoo re­spond­ed: “Tell Row­ley to fix the hole.”

But the irate pass­er-by start­ed his own chant, “Wipe yuh (sic) hole, fix yuh (sic ) hole.”

The pro­test­ers ac­cused him of be­ing PNM but he re­spond­ed by say­ing: “All yuh is the cor­po­ra­tion. You should bring ma­te­ri­als and patch the pot­hole. Don’t sit in it.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mayrhoo said they chose to put a chair in the pot­hole to show how deep it was.

“This is one of 20 holes that WASA dig from here to Fyz­abad. We do not have the re­sources to fix all 20 holes. This is not our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. We do not have the mon­ey. I want the Min­is­ter to see what is go­ing on here,” he said.

He added: “We are here sit­ting in the hole, ve­hi­cles can­not pass this half of the road. It is sad to see how the Gov­ern­ment is bring­ing mis­ery and hard­ship.”

Mayrhoo said the cor­po­ra­tion owed $4.6 mil­lion to 27 con­trac­tors and was not get­ting re­leas­es from the Gov­ern­ment to do ba­sic works.

“Look at this hole, it is two feet deep. The Gov­ern­ment has ab­solute­ly no re­spect for us,” Mayrhoo said.

“The cor­po­ra­tion is not re­spon­si­ble for the restora­tion of the road­way. If you look by the ceme­tery, there is an­oth­er hole like this.”

Sankers­ingh al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to fix the pot­holes.

“Every morn­ing here is traf­fic. Del­hi Road is di­lap­i­dat­ed.”

He said Tim­i­tal res­i­dents staged fiery protests yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“Every­where we go there are pot­holes and craters. There is no de­cent road for us to walk and dri­ve on,” he added.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, a se­nior WASA of­fi­cial said they had sched­uled restora­tion works to the area at Oropouche Junc­tion for to­day, while the oth­er ar­eas iden­ti­fied will be re­paired over the com­ing days.

Re­cent­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of the new­ly formed Sec­ondary Road and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny. He said this new spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny will get a start-up al­lo­ca­tion of $100 mil­lion to fix sec­ondary roads.