Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

A mas­sive pot­hole along Sad­dle Road, Boissiere Vil­lage, Mar­aval, has re-emerged just one week af­ter re­pair works were car­ried out, leav­ing mo­torists frus­trat­ed and con­tribut­ing to traf­fic grid­lock in the area.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day morn­ing and found the sec­tion of road­way had col­lapsed again, forc­ing dri­vers to nav­i­gate around the dam­aged area.

The sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther wors­ened by rain­fall lat­er in the day, with wa­ter ac­cu­mu­lat­ing around the af­fect­ed sec­tion of road.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes days af­ter the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­paired the large pot­hole caused by a leak be­neath the road­way.

Mar­aval taxi dri­vers had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about the con­di­tion of the road, say­ing the dam­aged sec­tion had caused sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic con­ges­tion.

Videos post­ed on so­cial me­dia last week showed ve­hi­cles strug­gling to pass through the af­fect­ed area.

The is­sue al­so prompt­ed Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert to raise con­cerns pub­licly.

In a post on X, Im­bert said he had been alert­ed to the con­di­tion of Sad­dle Road while he was over­seas and sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed WASA, which mo­bilised to re­pair the sink­hole.

He said the re­pair was car­ried out about a week ago, but the road had now col­lapsed again.

“To­day the road has col­lapsed again,” Im­bert wrote.

His lat­est com­ments come against the back­drop of a dis­pute last week over whether the road had been prop­er­ly re­paired.

Last week, the min­istry said the leak had been re­paired, a tem­po­rary re­in­state­ment was in place and per­ma­nent paving was sched­uled.

How­ev­er, the re-emer­gence of the pot­hole has re­newed con­cerns among mo­torists and taxi dri­vers about the con­di­tion of the road­way and whether the un­der­ly­ing prob­lem has been ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day who said he was in dis­cus­sion with WASA to ad­dress the is­sue.

Mean­while, WASA told Guardian Me­dia that re­pairs were sched­uled for yes­ter­day evening.