KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With the $178 mil­lion re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Moru­ga Road two years over­due, an­gry res­i­dents yes­ter­day set fire to tyres along the road­way de­mand­ing the Gov­ern­ment use some of that mon­ey to re­pair dan­ger­ous land­slips on the Lengua and Mandin­go Roads in Princes Town.

The protest came hours af­ter the Gov­ern­ment reim­ple­ment­ed COVID-19 re­stric­tions on gath­er­ings more than five. There were more than a dozen in­censed res­i­dents in the ac­tion who claimed that the Gov­ern­ment was not pri­ori­tis­ing work. Show­ing an ex­ca­va­tor at a land­slip along the Moru­ga Road, they said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was start­ing re­pairs to a slip­page that does not threat­en homes.

Mean­while, hous­es are crum­bling in Lengua and Mandin­go.

As un­usu­al dry sea­son rains con­tin­ued, the land­slip, which has al­ready de­mol­ished one fam­i­ly’s home, has be­gun to take an­oth­er. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty on Tues­day, an­oth­er part of Sham­i­na Mo­hamed’s front wall had col­lapsed in­to the mov­ing soil. Even the ru­ins of the Ali fam­i­ly’s home, which crum­bled down the hill last Au­gust, had bro­ken up even more. Last month, Sinanan said the min­istry would do a tem­po­rary shoring up of the road­way to get at least one lane pass­able. 

At yes­ter­day’s protest, Robin Singh said since Feb­ru­ary 2018, the Gov­ern­ment had promised to fix their road but did noth­ing. Last year, he said the min­istry did soil test­ing and sur­veys but no work start­ed. He said he was not ask­ing for his home to be fixed, on­ly the road re­paired and the land­slip sta­bilised.

“It is very un­fair. The road has to­tal­ly col­lapsed. Our hous­es are cav­ing and slip­ping away, the rainy sea­son is up­on us right now, and we need to have this project rerout­ed to Lengua Road and Mandin­go Road,” Singh said.

For In­di­an Walk res­i­dent Bron­son Char­lo, the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Moru­ga Road is long over­due. Al­though the por­tion of the road he protest­ed on was paved in the past few years, pot­holes are every­where and the land move­ments dam­age ve­hi­cles.

“We are beg­ging to get the road fixed and no­body is do­ing any­thing. Here, in­side Mandin­go, in­side Lengua, the whole road is bad. This morn­ing when I was com­ing up here, I got a flat tyre on this same spot,” Char­lo said.

He asked peo­ple to com­pare the roads in Moru­ga to Port-of-Spain, Ari­ma and Diego Mar­tin.

“Here is the bush, so they do not care about us down here.”

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin said while some work on the Moru­ga Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme had start­ed, most of the road sur­face re­mains un­even. Ben­jamin said in Cachipe, Cham­pi­on Hill, where works be­gan, the con­trac­tor stopped, com­plain­ing that there was no fund­ing.

“The pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of projects is not be­ing done, so we are in this prob­lem here to­day; $178 mil­lion and our roads do not re­flect that,” Ben­jamin said.

She said the re­pairs to a re­tain­ing wall in In­di­an Walk could with­stand the rainy sea­son. How­ev­er, the vil­lagers said that the land­slips in Lengua, Mandin­go and Cachipe can­not. She asked that the Gov­ern­ment show some com­pas­sion and re­al­lo­cate mon­ey to fund ur­gent re­pairs.

Sinanan: We are work­ing on the wider is­sue

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan not­ed nu­mer­ous land­slips and sta­bil­i­sa­tion works in Mandin­go Road and sur­round­ing ar­eas. Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia that his min­istry is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI). He said MEEI ge­ol­o­gists are car­ry­ing out tests in the area to de­ter­mine the un­der­ly­ing is­sue of land­slips. He said based on the find­ings, the min­istry could re­vis­it how it car­ries out sta­bil­i­sa­tion works in the com­mu­ni­ties. Sinanan pro­vid­ed an ex­cerpt from a re­port which showed 78 land­slips in the area, of which 10, in­clud­ing the Mandin­go Road land­slip, are re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion. The re­port showed that five fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the oc­cur­rence of land­slips in Trinidad were roads built on ridges, con­struc­tion type, soil type, slop­ing ground and wa­ter (rain­fall).

Oth­er ex­tend­ed fac­tors in­clude leaks from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty pipelines and poor wa­ter drainage from pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties.

 “The re­pair strat­e­gy for land­slips, es­pe­cial­ly in ex­pan­sive clay, is com­plex and re­quires com­ple­tion of geo-tech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions to un­der­stand the fail­ure, the soil prop­er­ties and iden­ti­fy the slip plane. Once com­plete, they can de­vel­op a suit­able strat­e­gy for re­pairs,” he said.

The re­port states that the Mandin­go Road land­slip falls in­to this cat­e­go­ry and to date, the tech­ni­cal staff has com­plet­ed the pre­lim­i­nary geo-tech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­signs for a suit­able, cost-ef­fec­tive re­pair so­lu­tion. Sub­ject to con­fir­ma­tion of funds, the work on the land­slip should be­gin in three weeks. The project should re­store con­nec­tiv­i­ty and sta­bilise the slip from fur­ther move­ments.