It's high time that the 40-year-old problem of those stink drains that run parallel and perpendicular to the bus route get fixed once and for all. Works Minister Jack Warner ought to complete the mediocre work left behind by the PNG when it began to poorly pave the Bee-tham Estate bus route drains, abandoning the project after the 2009 Summit of the Americas. Those disease-filled drains are among Port-of-Spain's top environmental health hazards. Why are they left unattended year in and year out? It is not difficult to conclude that their lack of repair has much to do with the social calibre of people who live in the Beetham Estate.
Politicians and all manner of high-ranking officials trek the bus route daily, driving by those stink drains as if they are picturesque scenes. Surely, during their police-escorted convoys they notice the disfiguring scene that are the Beetham drains, at the end of which is an ironic sign bidding welcome to the city of Port-of-Spain. Welcome to what, having driven past over a kilometre of stink stagnant water? Those stink drains are a symbol of what to expect in Port-of-Spain. They exist as a long-standing symbol of how government, past and present, treat without dignity the people of T&T, particularly its most disenfranchised.
B Joseph
Via e-mail