Kevon Felmine

De­spite Gov­ern­ment's spend­ing $110 mil­lion on road re­pairs in the "land­slip cap­i­tal" of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it will take years be­fore res­i­dents of Moru­ga en­joy the ben­e­fits. Out of the 478 land­slips list­ed by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, ac­cord­ing to MP for the area, Clifton De Coteau, 202 are in Moru­ga, which in­cludes 94 along the Moru­ga Road from In­di­an Walk to Gran Chemin.

Adding to the dan­ger­ous con­di­tions faced by res­i­dents, di­rec­tor of the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE), Hay­den Phillips, said some of the re­cent­ly-re­paired land­slips al­ready had be­gun to col­lapse. Those were some of the as­sess­ments made yes­ter­day by De Coteau, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter, Em­manuel George, and his deputy, Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine, when they toured sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in Moru­ga.

Among those af­fect­ed were Cachipe, Rock Riv­er, Basse Terre, St Mary's and La Lune. Phillips said the land­slides were caused by the pe­cu­liar soil type in the area, im­prop­er home con­struc­tion, poor drainage and a lack of prop­er main­te­nance. George said he had made the vis­it as a mat­ter of ur­gency af­ter re­ceiv­ing a let­ter re­cent­ly from the chair­man of Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um.

He said: "What made me de­cide to come as quick­ly as I have come here to­day is a let­ter that I re­ceived from the chair­man of Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny. "He had copied a let­ter from a dri­ver who had come along this road to de­liv­er pe­tro­le­um to a gas sta­tion. He al­most top­pled over in the ve­hi­cle try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate a land­slip."

He added: "So we de­cid­ed we have to come and see some of these land­slips here that cre­ate such a dan­ger to mo­torists and for res­i­dents of the area. "And what I saw to­day con­firmed the dan­ger to which mo­torists are ex­posed in this area." How­ev­er, the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted with his lim­it­ed bud­get, it was im­pos­si­ble to have all the land­slips re­paired. In­stead, he said, en­gi­neers would have to de­ter­mine which were crit­i­cal and would pri­ori­tise their re­pairs.

Phillips said the min­istry would have to ex­plore in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to rid the area of land­slips. He said: "Most of the land­slides in these ar­eas are due to the soil type which is very ex­pan­sive clay. A lot of it is due to man-made prob­lems be­cause of no gut­ter­ing in the hous­es, poor drainage and main­te­nance.

"So some of the in­no­v­a­tive things we are us­ing in­volve the MPs, who are start­ing to talk with their con­stituents, ei­ther to get drainage or gut­ter­ing be­cause most of the roads are built along ridges." He added: "So once the land starts mov­ing from low­er down, due to poor drainage in prop­er­ties, it will cause the road to go. "For Moru­ga to see nor­mal­cy, that will take an­oth­er cou­ple years. This is some­thing that we do on a phased ba­sis. Tours will de­ter­mine what the pri­or­i­ties are. "A land­slip can cost $800,000 to $5 mil­lion or $6 mil­lion, based on the scope."