Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A Clax­ton Bay fam­i­ly is ap­peal­ing to Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er for help fol­low­ing a dan­ger­ous land­slip which is threat­en­ing the fam­i­ly's home. Ri­car­do Sam­my, 34, of 109 For­res Park Trace, said the land­slip ap­peared af­ter the Min­istry of Works built a re­tain­ing wall to pre­vent the For­res Park road from cav­ing in. Sam­my said work be­gan late last year and he al­lowed the Min­istry per­son­nel to build the wall on his land. He said there was no land­slip on his prop­er­ty at the time of con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, he claimed, they ex­ca­vat­ed his land to con­struct the wall and used loose dirt as back­fill. Days af­ter the ex­ca­va­tion, he no­ticed slip­page on the right side of his house.

Sam­my said on Jan­u­ary 2, his sons An­drew, 10, and An­to­nio, 13, went to feed their dog and no­ticed the con­crete ken­nel had top­pled in­to a precipice. In hor­ror, the boys raced to tell Sam­my. "When I saw the ken­nel in the hole, I got re­al­ly scared," Sam­my said. He added that dur­ing heavy rain­fall, the precipice got big­ger, bring­ing the house on the brink. Sam­my said he stopped the crew from fin­ish­ing the work. "I couldn't have them build­ing a wall on my land to save the road and none of them care what they were do­ing to my house," he ex­plained. He said An­to­nio no longer sleeps in his bed­room be­cause he is afraid the west­ern side of the house would col­lapse in­to the precipice.

"At nights we can­not sleep be­cause we hear­ing creaks," he said. He said a sprawl­ing pine tree which was plant­ed be­fore he was born al­so ca­reened in­to the land­slide. "This is get­ting worse and if some­thing isn't done, my house will be gone," Sam­my said. A team from the Pro­gramme Up­grade for Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) vis­it­ed Sam­my's home on Fri­day and promised to do some tem­po­rary work. How­ev­er, Sam­my said he want­ed a per­ma­nent fix to the prob­lem, as he be­lieves the land­slip was caused ­by poor en­gi­neer­ing on the part of the min­istry. He said he had pho­tographs of his premis­es be­fore and af­ter the land­slip de­vel­oped and will seek le­gal ad­vice if the mat­ter was not cor­rect­ed. Sam­my said he want­ed Warn­er to vis­it and give in­struc­tions for the land­slide to be re­paired.