SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

A col­lapsed road and flood­ing in parts of Cen­tral Trinidad left dozens of res­i­dents un­able to ac­cess their homes over the week­end.

Sev­er­al weeks ago, a sink­hole ap­peared along Are­na Road in Freeport. That road­way con­nects Freeport to Ca­paro and is used dai­ly by hun­dreds of mo­torists.

Short­ly af­ter the sink­hole de­vel­oped, em­ploy­ees of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) be­gan re­pairs.

They had al­most com­plet­ed the job last week when a leak­ing WASA pipeline caused about ten feet of the road to col­lapse, ren­der­ing it im­pass­able.

On Sat­ur­day, flood­ing in Ca­paro and land­slides in Gran Cou­va and Mamoral forced many liv­ing in those ar­eas to try to use the Are­na Road to ac­cess their homes.

But with a makeshift bam­boo bar­ri­er and cau­tion tape block­ing off the area, those mo­torists turned around frus­trat­ed and dis­ap­point­ed.

“I don’t know what to do now,” one man said af­ter reach­ing the bam­boo bar­ri­er.

“Is hours now I try­ing to find a way to go home, all over block up with flood,” he added.

Aprana Boodram­s­ingh, who lives a short dis­tance away from the col­lapsed por­tion of the road, said res­i­dents were be­ing slow­ly cut off over the past sev­er­al months.

“It start­ed as a small sink­hole on one side and as it grew, ser­vices like the garbage truck stopped com­ing in­to the area be­cause it be­came too dan­ger­ous for us. Now, with the road com­plete­ly col­lapsed, for me to get home, it adds at least an hour to my com­mute,” she said.

But Boodram­s­ingh said with floods and land­slides block­ing oth­er ac­cess roads to the com­mu­ni­ty, res­i­dents were un­able to leave their homes.

“If you go out of the area, you may not be able to get back home be­cause if Mamoral is down, Flana­gin Town floods and the main road in Ca­paro is flood­ed, there is nowhere to pass to get home,” she said.

Boodram­s­ingh said res­i­dents were strug­gling to cope with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing and the added ex­pense of more fu­el to take al­ter­na­tive routes was be­com­ing too much.

“Peo­ple can­not cope, peo­ple are work­ing two and three jobs just to make ends meet. Stu­dents have ex­ams this week and many of them may not be able to get to school be­cause par­ents sim­ply can­not af­ford to pay trans­porta­tion costs to go the long way around,” she said.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area Arnold Ram said on No­vem­ber 19, he con­tact­ed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Faris Al-Rawi, seek­ing as­sis­tance to have the road re­paired. He said en­gi­neers were sent out to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion but no work has been done.

“What we would like to see in Ca­roni Cen­tral is the same lev­el of ur­gency and pri­or­i­ty that is be­ing giv­en to oth­er parts of the coun­try. When a sink­hole ap­peared in St Ann’s ear­li­er this year, it was ad­dressed the very next day, we are here for sev­en days and count­ing,” Ram said.

Coun­cilor for the area Anil Bali­ram said the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion has not re­ceived its fund­ing un­der the ma­te­r­i­al and sup­ply vault. Bali­ram said this mon­ey could have been used to pur­chase ma­te­r­i­al to com­plete the job.

“We are go­ing in­to the fourth month of the new fi­nan­cial year and that fund­ing has not been re­leased. I know the Min­is­ter will come with his fa­mous line about un­spent bal­ances but what he is not say­ing is that to ac­cess that mon­ey, he needs to ap­prove it, so get­ting emer­gency works done with that mon­ey is not so sim­ple,” Bali­ram said.

He said even if the fund­ing is re­leased, the work can­not con­tin­ue un­less WASA re­pairs its line.

“WASA mains are run here and at present, it is leak­ing, so every time we do work here, the wa­ter un­der­mines it fur­ther. So the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties needs to send his peo­ple as well to re­pair these lines,” Bali­ram said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Al-Rawi, who said he was aware of the is­sue.

“The project is scoped al­ready for a con­tract to be award­ed,” Al-Rawi said.

He did not re­spond when asked when the project would start.