Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The South Oropouche Riv­er is widen­ing, claim­ing the land around the Sanahie Trace bridge.

How­ev­er, with­in the last three months the rate of ero­sion has in­creased, com­pro­mis­ing the road­way around the bridge and now threat­en­ing one home.

With the dan­ger grow­ing, the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) closed the bridge ear­li­er this week. Res­i­dents are now call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) to ren­der im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance.

Liv­ing at the cor­ner of Sanahie Trace and Sanahie Branch Trace, Ronald Ram­goolam is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened by the riv­er, which flows be­hind his home.

“It’s not safe liv­ing there know­ing that the land slip­ping so fast now,” he said.

Ram­goolam said he has moved his fence twice in re­cent months with the land be­hind his home col­laps­ing in­to the riv­er. He point­ed to a bam­boo patch rough­ly 100 feet away in the mid­dle of the riv­er, say­ing that’s where his fence used to be. Now, his house sits on the river­bank and part of his fence lines the walls of it.

A wood­work­er by trade said if he los­es his home he will al­so lose his liveli­hood with his shop with­in the prop­er­ty.

A res­i­dent for over 50 years and fa­ther to Bar­rack­pore West coun­cil­lor, Nicholas Kan­hai, Dhani­ram Kan­hai lives a stone’s throw away from the riv­er. He said he was one of the work­ers who helped build the bridge over 30 years ago. He blames dredg­ing ex­er­cis­es for the riv­er’s widen­ing.

“Every time the Min­istry (of Works and Trans­port) send con­trac­tors to...clear the wa­ter­course and the riv­er, what they ac­tu­al­ly do, they ac­tu­al­ly broke down the trees on both sides. And break­ing down the trees is not clear­ing the wa­ter­course,” he said.

Kan­hai point­ed to ar­eas that were vis­i­bly wider than the stream of wa­ter. He said these spots that caved in­to the wa­ter­course once had trees be­fore be­ing cleared by the con­trac­tors.

He said one mo­torist drove off the col­laps­ing road around the bridge last Fri­day be­fore it was closed to the pub­lic.

Mo­hess Road and En­vi­rons Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil mem­ber Dan­ny Rag­bir said the re­sult­ing road clo­sure had ex­tend­ed res­i­dent’s com­mute by at least 15 min­utes and al­so left the com­mu­ni­ty vul­ner­a­ble, as emer­gency ap­pli­ances from the Fire Ser­vice and am­bu­lances can’t use any of the near­by ac­cess routes due to small bai­ley bridges.

He said a wa­ter main run­ning along the bridge and col­laps­ing land was con­demned af­ter sev­er­al rup­tures and has af­fect­ed the com­mu­ni­ty’s wa­ter sup­ply. He said he made sev­er­al at­tempts to have the is­sue rec­ti­fied by the min­istry but de­spite nu­mer­ous site vis­its, noth­ing was done.

One of the is­sues, he said, is a mat­ter of ju­ris­dic­tion. He said Sanahie Trace falls un­der the re­mit of the PDRC but the riv­er, the source of the prob­lem, falls un­der the re­mit of the min­istry’s drainage di­vi­sion.

Re­gard­less of whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty the re­pairs fall to, Kan­hai said the scope of the project is more than the cor­po­ra­tion can han­dle.

“Our al­lo­ca­tion, we re­quest­ed $100 mil­lion for re­cur­rent to treat with...reg­u­lar day-to-day is­sues. This project is a very very big project,” he said.

He not­ed that if ac­tion was tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter con­cerns were ini­tial­ly raised years ago, the sit­u­a­tion would not have evolved to its cur­rent state.

“We un­der­stand that there are chal­lenges with re­sources you know. We un­der­stand that there are chal­lenges with rev­enues and so on but give the res­i­dents an as­sur­ance (that) okay, this is the plan of ac­tion, we have iden­ti­fied the prob­lem, we have iden­ti­fied what the so­lu­tion is or could be and this is the plan of ac­tion. This is what we go­ing to do to­day, to­mor­row, next week, next year. But don’t just leave it ne­glect­ed and aban­doned. That’s ex­act­ly how we feel,” Kan­hai said.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he has ad­vo­cat­ed with the Gov­ern­ment to re­solve the Sanahie Trace is­sue but has not had any suc­cess. How­ev­er, he said there are oth­ers with­in his con­stituen­cy ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same fate.

“To­day the sit­u­a­tion is in a dire strait and we are days away from a dis­as­ter of one kind or an­oth­er and we call up­on the au­thor­i­ties to bring to bear re­sources to fix this prob­lem. We need about four or five bridges in the Oropouche East con­stituen­cy,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan for a com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day but none was pro­vid­ed up to press time.