Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For res­i­dents of Todd’s Road to Todd’s Sta­tion Road, it costs as much as $120 a per­son to get home from a late night lime be­cause the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) has stopped ser­vic­ing the area and the few pri­vate for high­er (PH) ve­hi­cles still op­er­at­ing have hiked their prices be­cause of the de­plorable con­di­tion of the road.

The com­mu­ni­ty, which con­nects Ch­agua­nas and San Raphael, com­pris­es 501 house­holds, 23 busi­ness­es and 1,741 res­i­dents, ac­cord­ing to the 2011 cen­sus, the lat­est avail­able da­ta.

The seren­i­ty and green­ery through­out the area is post­card-per­fect but to get there, vis­i­tors must nav­i­gate sev­er­al di­lap­i­dat­ed parts of the road and the jour­ney from Long­denville to Brazil is not rec­om­mend­ed for per­sons prone to mo­tion sick­ness.

For mo­torists con­cerned about wear and tear on their ve­hi­cles, tak­ing the high­way is a bet­ter idea.

How­ev­er, for res­i­dents Shantee Kissoon, Eliz­a­beth Cyrus and Kim­ber­ly Thomas, hitch-hik­ing out of the com­mu­ni­ty and pay­ing, de­pend­ing on the time of day, as lit­tle as $20 a per­son to get home through the pot­hole-filled, un­even road is the on­ly op­tion.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed last Thurs­day, Cyrus took time away from watch­ing tele­vi­sion to com­plain about how the lack of a bus ser­vice has lim­it­ed her move­ments and forced three of her grand­chil­dren to stop at­tend­ing school.

“Two of the girls does go Cara­pichaima West Sec­ondary School and is re­al prob­lems to get mon­ey for them to trav­el to school. Since school open they ain’t go to school be­cause of the (lack of) trans­port. Is $80 a day for the two of them, so if you have to spend $80 a day for five days, check that out. Where we get­ting that when we not work­ing any­where?” Cyrus said.

Five of her nine grand­chil­dren live with her and three of them, all teenagers, are un­able to at­tend school be­cause of the high trans­porta­tion costs. The youngest, ten, is in Stan­dard Three at Todd’s Road Pri­ma­ry School and Cyrus en­sures she at­tends school every day even if it means she must walk back home af­ter drop­ping her off.

“Some­times I come out by the road­side and beg every car that pass for $5 and $10 and make up mon­ey for dem grand­chil­dren to go to school and to buy food to put on my ta­ble. That is an easy life? That is not an easy life,” she said.

Cyrus, who was cel­e­brat­ing her 15th wed­ding an­niver­sary on the day Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed, re­called dig­ging dirt and cart­ing it in a wheel­bar­row to fill pot­holes along the di­lap­i­dat­ed road­way.

She re­called, “This is a main road. I had blocked this road one day, the 8th of No­vem­ber, two years ago. I blocked the road be­cause of the con­di­tion. When I block the road, some peo­ple want­ed to fight me, telling me I don’t have a ve­hi­cle, why I block­ing the road. I does need a drop to go out the road, so I block the road and when I do it, they come and do this fool­ish­ness.”

Cyrus, who turns 61 to­day, said some­time be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic she and her hus­band, Robert Ser­rette, were al­most killed when a car ran off the road and land­ed and on top of them as they slept. At the time, the road was not as bad as it is to­day.

“If I was not liv­ing there (just be­fore the col­lapsed road), most of the taxis was not bring­ing me home. Peo­ple who liv­ing past the land­slip, the taxis does not want to come and drop them home and the bus stop long time. Life was tough but we used to make out. This is re­al des­per­a­tion we have, re­al prob­lems here,” she said.

An ex­pen­sive in­con­ve­nience

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, a team that in­clud­ed La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP Fos­ter Cum­mings, Long­denville/Tal­paro coun­cil­lor Ryan Ram­per­sad and en­gi­neers from the min­istries of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works and Trans­port passed through the com­mu­ni­ty start­ing at Todd’s Road and end­ing at Brazil Vil­lage.

They as­sessed the com­mu­ni­ty’s in­fra­struc­tur­al needs and promised to rec­ti­fy them. At that time, the road de­pres­sion out­side Cyrus’ home did not ex­ist but there were oth­er ar­eas along Todd’s Road and Todd’s Sta­tion Road in need of re­pair.

Calls and mes­sages were sent to Cum­mings and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and their re­spec­tive pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cers for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion. On Fri­day, Di­ane Baldeo-Chadeesingh, Cum­mings’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, di­rect­ed Guardian Me­dia to Sinanan who said in an emailed re­sponse that the Works Min­istry will con­tin­ue road re­pairs along the ten kilo­me­tre stretch of road in the new year.

“Cur­rent­ly there are six land­slips on Todd’s Sta­tion Road at the 0.7, 2.8, 3.4, 3.5, 5.1 and 5.8km marks. To date, the High­ways Di­vi­sion has un­der­tak­en in­ter­im shoring works with the aim of main­tain­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty across the area. Ad­di­tion­al works are sched­uled un­der the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE).”

In an­oth­er part of the vil­lage, Kissoon, a 58-year-old Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­er, said the bus from Ch­agua­nas to Tal­paro ran like clock­work when it was in­tro­duced about 13 years ago.

“The bus used to run three times a day, morn­ing, lunchtime and evening. Then it come and they stop it and it used to run morn­ing and evening and through the bad road and ting, it can’t pass,” she said.

To get out of the area, Kissoon and oth­er vil­lagers nor­mal­ly hitch rides to Ch­agua­nas or some­where clos­er to where taxis usu­al­ly op­er­ate. To get back home be­fore 7 pm, the taxi fare is $20 a per­son—five times the cost of a $4 bus tick­et.

“I is a sin­gle par­ent, my hus­band died so it does be kin­da hard. I work­ing URP, I have my lit­tle busi­ness here but the place slow. It tough, it re­al­ly tough for a sin­gle par­ent up here and for those with ve­hi­cles it is tough for them as well,” she said.

Kissoon, who sat at the side of her yel­low and blue par­lour, said with her ag­ing knees, she is un­able to walk in and out of the com­mu­ni­ty. Her great­est wish is for the re­sump­tion of af­ford­able and re­li­able trans­porta­tion.

She said be­cause of the length of time since the road col­lapsed, res­i­dents have grown ac­cus­tomed to it and no longer make a fuss. How­ev­er, they still com­plain, mur­mur among them­selves that the au­thor­i­ties don’t care about their vil­lage.

Thomas, 19, learned the hard way, on Wednes­day night, the im­por­tance of re­turn­ing home be­fore 7 pm when she was forced to pay $100 in taxi fare—and that was on­ly af­ter beg­ging and even­tu­al­ly wear­ing down the dri­ver who agreed to take her home.

“I didn’t mind pay­ing that amount be­cause as a fe­male I didn’t want to be trav­el­ling late. I had the mon­ey at the time too. If I didn’t have it, it would have been dif­fer­ent,” she said.

Bussing style

At a meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) in June, PTSC board mem­bers said on­ly 79 of 163 routes are be­ing ser­viced and there are just 160 of the 170 bus­es in the com­pa­ny’s fleet work­ing when 500 bus­es are need­ed to fa­cil­i­tate all the routes.

PTSC vice-chair­man Robin Ram­per­sad told the PAC that the bus com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive the first of three tranch­es late next year with an over­all ex­pect­ed in­crease to the fleet of 300 bus­es.

The PAC was told that some of the bus­es were as old as 18 years, with the newest ones in the fleet ac­quired be­tween 2018 to 2020.

Todd’s Sta­tion Road, an ex­ten­sion of Todd’s Road has the worse of the two ar­eas when com­par­ing bad roads.

A taxi dri­ver and his pas­sen­ger, who were in the vicin­i­ty of Sookdeo Trace, laughed when asked about road con­di­tions.

The pas­sen­ger, an el­der­ly East In­di­an man who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, point­ed to the di­lap­i­dat­ed roads and said, “Yuh see here, here is the best bad road.”

The taxi dri­ver, who al­so did not want to be named, said the bad roads have dam­aged cars, but no one seemed to care.

Some 45 kilo­me­tres away, in an­oth­er rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, Las La­pas, Bras­so Seco, res­i­dents were al­so ap­peal­ing for a reg­u­lar bus ser­vice.

One res­i­dent, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Andy, spoke about the dif­fi­cul­ties of get­ting to school.

“You have to get up very ear­ly. The bus doesn’t run again. One of my friends, he’s work­ing in Asa Wright right now, thank God. But for CXC, he let me know that he missed most of his ex­ams on the grounds of no trans­port. It takes away the zeal for a youth man or child to say they are go­ing to school. It seems like a re­al task. A re­al hard task,” he said.

Res­i­dents said it costs $100 a day in taxi fare for a child in Bras­so Seco to at­tend school.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 2020 and 2022, at least 151 pri­ma­ry school and 2,663 sec­ondary school stu­dents dropped out of school for vary­ing rea­sons, in­clud­ing lack of ac­cess.