Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Wel­come Road, Cunu­pia, say they feel ne­glect­ed by Gov­ern­ment, as their calls for the road to be fixed have been ig­nored.

Last month, they staged a fiery protest to com­plain about the same is­sue. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, the res­i­dents ex­plained that they’ve been deal­ing with the de­plorable road con­di­tions for more than a decade.

“In my time liv­ing here, this road nev­er get a facelift, it nev­er had any­thing done like paving or any­thing, all they do long ago was to patch...this has been go­ing on for years, up­on years, up­on years, un­til this is the con­di­tion it be­comes,” res­i­dent Sil­mar Monoo said.

Monoo, who has been liv­ing on Wel­come Road for 20 years, said she’s reached the point where she’ll sup­port what­ev­er it takes to bring at­ten­tion to the mat­ter and get the road re­paired.

“I with the vil­lagers, I with the taxis, what­ev­er it takes for we to protest, to burn, to block from 4 o’clock for days, I don’t care. We need to do some­thing be­cause it’s too long and it’s not get­ting bet­ter,” she said.

The woman said her daugh­ter does not even want to in­vite friends over be­cause of the road­way, which caus­es is­sues with dust dur­ing the dry sea­son.

A pen­sion­er, who did not want to give her name, said she spends most of her days locked in­doors be­cause of the air qual­i­ty along Wel­come Road.

“I can’t open meh win­dows, I can’t even sit down in the gallery...I am so tired and so fed-up, look at the con­di­tion of this road, no­body cares. We have a Gov­ern­ment who don’t care and an Op­po­si­tion who don’t care, what is go­ing on,” the pen­sion­er said.

Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecher­an told the res­i­dents yes­ter­day that since he was elect­ed in 2020, he’s been ask­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

“My job as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive is to rep­re­sent the peo­ple and that’s what I’ve been do­ing. This was raised as a mat­ter on the ad­journ­ment since 2016. In 2020, when I be­came the MP, I had writ­ten to Kaz­im Ho­sein with a pe­ti­tion with over 60 res­i­dents, I’ve writ­ten Min­is­ter Sinanan, I have writ­ten to Faris Al-Rawi...nu­mer­ous at­tempts have been made to rec­ti­fy this road,” he stat­ed.

The MP added that he al­so brought the sit­u­a­tion up dur­ing this year’s Bud­get de­bate.

Res­i­dents were al­so up­set about how the pot­hole-rid­dled road af­fect­ed their ve­hi­cles and caused taxi dri­vers to raise their fees.

“Some of the cars, they want to take ex­tra mon­ey, so I does rather walk it,” res­i­dent Ra­j­daye Singh said.

“I does be spend­ing mon­ey on my ve­hi­cle, this is not an old ve­hi­cle I have and I do­ing sus­pen­sion work on it right now...I’ve heard taxis com­plain­ing about the road be­ing so bad that they not com­ing to drop vil­lagers, they have to pay for a full trip,” res­i­dent Ju­madeen Rahimul­lah added.

Rahimul­lah was al­so con­cerned about crime in the area, as he claimed the con­di­tion of the road­way pre­vent­ed po­lice from re­spond­ing in a time­ly man­ner. He claimed the emer­gency health ser­vice and Fire Ser­vice al­so faced sim­i­lar is­sues.
Taxi dri­ver Mar­lon Romero said tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens should not be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such ne­glect.

“We pay­ing prop­er­ty tax and you can’t come to your prop­er­ty,” he said

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan about the con­di­tion of Wel­come Road but he said it is un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

At­tempts to reach chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi were un­suc­cess­ful.