Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration is be­ing com­mend­ed by the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team head, Val­lence Ramb­harat af­ter it in­stalled sig­nage on a Guayagu­yare road where mo­bile nav­i­ga­tion apps of­ten strand mo­torists.

The road in ques­tion is at the junc­tion of Saun­ders Trace and Guayagu­yare Road in Rio Claro. Turn­ing left at the junc­tion will take mo­torists out to Rio Claro.

Those who fol­low the nav­i­ga­tion app's ad­vice to turn right on­to the road that is noth­ing more than a track to get to Guayagu­yare will find them­selves ei­ther stuck in the mud or un­able to pass at the end of it be­cause it is blocked off with a gate and oil tank. The on­ly sign of civil­i­sa­tion on the road is a Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration fa­cil­i­ty a short way in.

It's this fa­cil­i­ty a cou­ple on their way to a wed­ding in Sep­tem­ber had to walk for hours to af­ter their ve­hi­cle got stuck. There are pre­vi­ous re­ports of it oc­cur­ring to oth­ers. Dur­ing a tour to high­light the mis­take with Guardian Me­dia short­ly af­ter this in­ci­dent, Ramb­harat said there are nu­mer­ous un­re­port­ed in­ci­dents as well. It's why he said they asked Touch­stone to erect the signs af­ter res­cu­ing the cou­ple.

On Tues­day, Ramb­harat dis­cov­ered the signs were in­stalled and com­mend­ed the com­pa­ny for heed­ing the ad­vice.

"We are pleased Touch­stone kept its word so that any­body dri­ving on this road now will see this big sign here," he said.

"We are sure now that any dri­ver pass­ing on this road will be able to look at this sig­nage and not get them­selves in dif­fi­cul­ties in the fu­ture so we are so hap­py that Touch­stone made an in­ter­ven­tion on be­half of Hunters Search and Res­cue Team and CNC3 to get this sig­nage up."

Ramb­harat and his team were in the area search­ing for a miss­ing Venezue­lan na­tion­al.

Luis To­var, 51, left Rio Claro and walked along the Guayagua­yare Road, Rio Claro. To­var, who has Alzheimer's Dis­ease, was last seen on April 28 by the work­ers at the Buf­fa­lyp­so farm walk­ing in.