RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

The $14 mil­lion tem­po­rary Man­zanil­la By­pass Road, the lone route con­nect­ing com­mu­ni­ties along the scenic east coast, is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing rapid­ly, leav­ing com­muters wor­ried.

With the on­set of the rainy sea­son, taxi dri­vers fear the en­tire road may be washed away in­to the sea, mir­ror­ing the fate of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road, which col­lapsed last year dur­ing heavy rains.

Joel Leza­ma who op­er­ates along the San­gre Grande to Ma­yaro route told Guardian Me­dia that not enough main­te­nance was be­ing done.

"When this by­pass was built, they promised to do reg­u­lar main­te­nance but look at the con­di­tion. We spoke to Mr Sinanan (Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter), but he is not re­spond­ing," Leza­ma said.

De­spite send­ing pic­tures of the road, he lament­ed that no ac­tion was tak­en to ad­dress the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion.

An­oth­er taxi dri­ver An­cil Oliv­er de­scribed the by­pass as an "in­cu­ba­tor for pot­holes."

He said the poor road con­di­tions have es­ca­lat­ed the cost of ve­hic­u­lar main­te­nance, bur­den­ing dri­vers with ex­pen­sive re­pairs.

"All dri­vers are fac­ing hard­ship be­cause we have to change parts, and these car parts are ex­pen­sive. The parts place peo­ple are mak­ing mon­ey on us," Oliv­er ex­claimed.

He said the road's de­te­ri­o­ra­tion has re­sult­ed in dam­aged shocks, bro­ken wind­shields, and un­ex­pect­ed ex­pens­es.

An­oth­er Dave Ma­haraj said he too suf­fered dam­age to his shocks.

Ro­get Phillip, a dai­ly user of the road, ac­knowl­edged some main­te­nance work but said the works were shod­dy.

"If they do work on a Sat­ur­day, by Tues­day, it's dam­aged again. They need to find a per­ma­nent fix," he as­sert­ed.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, echoed the con­cerns of the com­mu­ni­ty say­ing the Min­is­ter must ur­gent­ly ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. He sug­gest­ed the use of a pe­tro­le­um-based binder for re­pair and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er light­ing and safe­ty mea­sures to pre­vent ac­ci­dents.

"The tem­po­rary by­pass road has be­come haz­ardous for mo­torists due to nu­mer­ous sinks and un­even sur­faces, and over­all dan­ger­ous con­di­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing night­time," Paray said.

He added: "Re­cent­ly, a ve­hi­cle over­turned off the road due to the ab­sence of re­flec­tive guides and in­ad­e­quate light­ing in some parts."

Paray ex­plained that the ab­sence of a pe­tro­le­um-based binder on the road's sur­face has made it vul­ner­a­ble to con­tin­u­ous de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.

Min­is­ter re­sponds- Works to be­gin in 6 weeks

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in Gas­par­il­lo on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter Sinanan said the ten­der of phase one of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road, which is the re­moval of ma­te­r­i­al from the road, will start in a month.

"Next week, five more pack­ages will go out and with­in the next six weeks, you will see the start of the re­build­ing of the new road," Sinanan said.

He ex­plained that the up­grades of the tem­po­rary road were sup­posed to oc­cur week­ly.

"I have asked con­trac­tors to go in week­ly and keep grad­ing the road. I am in con­stant con­tact with the taxi dri­vers there," he said.

Con­cern­ing Paray's call to use pe­tro­le­um-based binders, Sinanan said this can­not be done as it will af­fect the 235,000-acre Nar­i­va swamp. Sinanan said ap­provals have to be giv­en by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs be­fore any work can be done.