RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Forced to evac­u­ate their crum­bling sev­en-bed­room home be­cause of a ma­jor land­slip, a Table­land fam­i­ly is now plead­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to re­lo­cate them.

Stan­ley Ram­nath, his wife Bas­daye and ten mem­bers of their fam­i­ly are now home­less af­ter their two-storey home sank in­to a precipice at Williams Smith Trace, Man­ta­cool Road, Robert Vil­lage. Ram­nath said the house was once at road lev­el but in 2003, a WASA line rup­tured and the land start­ed to cave in.

Mul­ti­ple leaks de­vel­oped af­ter­wards and al­though Ram­nath spent over $100,000 build­ing re­tain­ing walls and drains to safe­guard his prop­er­ty, all was in vain. Be­tween Jan­u­ary to Au­gust, fol­low­ing heavy rains, the house came crum­bling down, slant­i­ng to­wards the road and top­pling off its pil­lars. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Bas­daye said their lives had be­come de­press­ing.

“All of this start­ed in 2003 when we no­ticed the drain cracked. The min­istry came to fix the drain but then they re­alised the WASA line was leak­ing and this caused the line to shift to­wards the garage,” Bas­daye said.

With­in a few short months, sur­face wa­ter be­gan gush­ing down­wards.

“We went all over for help. The house be­gan sink­ing. Right now, the house is leak­ing so bad that it is slant­ed. We can­not walk prop­er­ly and we propped the bed, the stove and the fridge but every­thing is still mov­ing,” Bas­daye added. She said the house was pushed down about 50 feet.

Members of the Ramnath family inside their crumbling home at Roberts Village, Tableland, on Wednesday.

INNIS FRANCIS

“While we were in the house, we keep hear­ing cracks and get­ting shakes and a sud­den drop. Every time a ve­hi­cle pass­es it rocks the house and makes a hard noise like a boom. Every­thing keeps falling, the cup­boards let go,” she not­ed.

Bas­daye added, “We are liv­ing in trau­ma, we don’t know when the wall will squeeze and col­lapse on us. T&TEC dis­con­nect us.” Say­ing no­body want­ed to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the dam­age, Bas­daye called on the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene and pro­vide re­lief.

“It’s years now the Min­istry of Works say­ing they will do a wall but noth­ing do­ing. We bought four pumps to pump the wa­ter out and it keeps spoil­ing,” Bas­daye said.

Mean­while, MP for the area Michelle Ben­jamin said she has writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Works, Hous­ing Min­is­ter and the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and up to now there has been no pos­i­tive re­sponse. They say­ing that peo­ple can ac­cess grants but there is red tape.
I have 35 home­own­ers in need of help right now,” she said.

Ben­jamin said the HDC sent a wel­fare of­fi­cer to vis­it the fam­i­ly but the of­fi­cer was scared to walk in the yard or to vis­it the slant­ed struc­ture.

“We have over 10 peo­ple liv­ing here, the fa­ther is de­pressed. HDC needs to step up, these are peo­ple’s lives that we are deal­ing with,” she added.

Last week, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the min­istry was not re­spon­si­ble for com­pen­sat­ing res­i­dents but said oth­er State agen­cies could be reached to ac­cess as­sis­tance.