Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

“Please, please do some­thing.”

That was the des­per­ate plea from Pe­nal Rock Road, Moru­ga res­i­dent Ger­ald Gue­var­ro, as he stood in­side a mas­sive crater just me­tres from his home, ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to re­pair the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road­way.

Gue­var­ro said res­i­dents have en­dured years of ne­glect as the road con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate. The crater, which res­i­dents es­ti­mate is more than three feet deep, is one of sev­er­al pot­holes and de­pres­sions that have de­vel­oped along the road­way.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia the haz­ardous con­di­tions have dam­aged ve­hi­cles, dis­rupt­ed pub­lic trans­porta­tion and placed both mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans at risk.

Gue­var­ro said his com­mu­ni­ty has been ne­glect­ed for years.

“This com­mu­ni­ty, for the past cou­ple of years, gov­ern­ment come, gov­ern­ment go, they are not do­ing noth­ing for we. They are not as­sist­ing we.”

While the com­mu­ni­ty al­so faces prob­lems with an ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply and leak­ing pipelines, he said the most press­ing is­sue is the di­lap­i­dat­ed road link­ing Moru­ga and Pe­nal.

He com­plained that politi­cians on­ly vis­it the area dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns and ex­pressed con­cern that the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road­way pos­es a dan­ger to stu­dents at­tend­ing the near­by San­ta Maria RC School.

“With this con­di­tion chil­dren will can’t go to school,” he lament­ed.

“I beg­ging the peo­ple, please ... al­lyuh come and as­sist we in Pe­nal Rock Road. We just like every­body. They say we be­hind God back but no, we just like every­body. Please as­sist we. Do some­thing for we, please.”

Gue­var­ro said the crater first de­vel­oped more than a year ago and has con­tin­ued to erode, while an­oth­er is be­gin­ning to form just a few me­tres away.

“The wa­ter­way, it don’t have a prop­er cul­vert be­low here. Every time the rain falls, this whole thing go­ing to fall,” he said.

Long-time res­i­dent Stephen Morales said the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture has made dai­ly life in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult.

He said taxi dri­vers some­times refuse to ser­vice the area be­cause the poor road con­di­tions dam­age their ve­hi­cles.

Res­i­dent and busi­ness own­er Ava Morales, whose prop­er­ty is be­side one of the dan­ger­ous de­pres­sions, fears some­one could be se­ri­ous­ly in­jured.

She re­called a re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a bus trans­port­ing pri­ma­ry school chil­dren on a field trip.

“When they reach at this lo­ca­tion here, the bus tilt­ed and the chil­dren start­ed to scream. So, they had abort it, let some of the chil­dren come out of the bus and the dri­ver tried his best and he crossed and then he was able to pick back up the chil­dren af­ter this in­cline.”

Morales said there have been nu­mer­ous oth­er in­ci­dents in­volv­ing ve­hi­cles and not­ed that the last ma­jor re­pairs were car­ried out sev­er­al years ago.

“Al­most every­one in this vil­lage has been af­fect­ed by this dan­ger­ous de­pres­sion here. It is caus­ing nu­mer­ous prob­lems in this vil­lage.”

She said the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road­way has al­so af­fect­ed de­liv­ery ser­vices and garbage col­lec­tion and could de­lay emer­gency re­spon­ders.

“Some­times you see the nuts and the bolts and the screws on the ground there. So peo­ple’s ve­hi­cles are be­ing very, very, very dam­aged.”

Morales al­so ex­pressed con­cern about crime, say­ing res­i­dents fear be­ing at­tacked, par­tic­u­lar­ly at night, when mo­torists are forced to slow down to nav­i­gate the pot­holes and de­pres­sions.

Re­spond­ing to the con­cerns, Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin said sev­er­al con­tracts had been award­ed be­fore the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, but a num­ber of the projects did not pro­ceed be­cause con­trac­tors aban­doned the works.

“There are al­so in­stances where con­tracts were award­ed to fix the cross­ings and cul­verts through­out this road and sev­er­al oth­ers, but the con­trac­tors have not start­ed since the awards were made be­fore last year’s elec­tion. While works to ad­dress the sink­hole were re­port­ed­ly award­ed, the project did not com­mence.”

How­ev­er, Ben­jamin said the mat­ter has since been re­sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture for ur­gent at­ten­tion and fur­ther ac­tion.

She said she would con­tin­ue ad­vo­cat­ing for re­pairs to the de­plorable road net­work through­out her con­stituen­cy.

Moru­ga coun­cil­lor Joseph Lo­rant said Pe­nal Rock Road re­mains a ma­jor thor­ough­fare con­nect­ing vil­lages from Pe­nal to Guayagua­yare, and with schools now on va­ca­tion, restor­ing the road­way is of para­mount im­por­tance.

Giv­en the road’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion, he said the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion has been forced to use al­ter­na­tive ve­hi­cles in­stead of com­pactors to col­lect house­hold garbage.

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said there could be sev­er­al rea­sons why the works were not com­plet­ed, but he did not have that in­for­ma­tion.

Sinanan said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion or the con­trac­tors in­volved would be bet­ter placed to com­ment on the mat­ter.