Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Jay­dia Ham­let's hope of en­joy­ing her first day at a new school was dashed yes­ter­day when Moru­ga res­i­dents em­barked on a fiery protest leav­ing hun­dreds of stu­dents strand­ed. The protest caught the stu­dents by sur­prise. Be­fore dawn just be­fore traf­fic backed up, the an­gry res­i­dents smashed bot­tles and stones on the side­walks and streets be­tween Fort George Road and In­di­an Walk. They dragged logs and tyres across the road and set them on fire. Jay­dia, who was with her par­ents, said she was dis­ap­point­ed. "I re­al­ly looked for­ward to my first day at Cowen Hamil­ton but now I have to go back home," Jay­dia said. Shan­niyah Hunte, who was on her way to the Fifth Com­pa­ny Bap­tist School, said she al­so was dis­heart­ened. "I want­ed to meet my teach­ers. I feel sad that we can't go to school," Hunte said.

How­ev­er, the Moru­ga res­i­dents said they de­cid­ed to block the roads on the first day of school be­cause that was the on­ly way to get the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties. At one point, the en­tire road had caved away in­to a 15-foot precipice leav­ing a treach­er­ous path for un­wary dri­vers. Eli­jah Dube said four hous­es had al­ready fall­en and every week dri­vers had to change car parts be­cause of the roads. He al­so said taxi dri­vers had to in­crease their fares by $2 be­cause of the de­plorable road con­di­tions. "We can't blame them. The cars drag­ging and mash­ing up on this road. Look at the con­di­tion," Dube said as he point­ed to the land­slip. He said WASA had been com­ing al­most every day to re­pair wa­ter leaks which ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lems. Dube said it would be ide­al to "float the line." "Every day a back­hoe com­ing to dig and WASA still bury­ing the line un­der the ground," Dube said. He said four hous­es in the area had to be evac­u­at­ed be­cause of the land­slips.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Phyl­lis We­st­on, said res­i­dents were the vic­tims of pol­i­tics. She said af­ter the last protest, then Min­is­ter of Works, Jack Warn­er and MP Clifton De Coteau promised to fix the roads. "The Gov­ern­ment wicked. Every day Clifton De Coteau pass­ing on this road with his high van and he do­ing noth­ing about it. We fed up," We­st­on shout­ed. LaShan­na Al­leyne, who works at Met­al In­dus­tries, said her daugh­ter Ki­mayah suf­fered from asth­ma be­cause of the dust. "Right now I tak­ing her to the doc­tor. Look at our hous­es. It can't stay clean be­cause of all the dust. It is time the au­thor­i­ties lis­ten to us," Al­leyne said. De Coteau said yes­ter­day he had in­formed res­i­dents that work was sup­posed to start on the land­slip to­day. He said he had been lob­by­ing Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George to fix the roads. "I sym­pa­thise with them. I want all my roads in my con­stituen­cy to be fixed but I can­not speed up the process be­cause they have to re­design the re­tain­ing walls," De Coteau added. He said WASA al­ready had dis­con­nect­ed two wa­ter­lines and was mov­ing to bring the line above ground.

WASA re­sponds

In a state­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, WASA said on Au­gust 22, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture's PURE Unit and the wa­ter util­i­ty vis­it­ed the site of a land­slip on the Moru­ga Main Road. WASA said the land­slip re­sult­ed in dam­age to two of the au­thor­i­ty's dis­tri­b­u­tion mains on the main road, an area prone to land slip­page. It said over the past six months re­pairs have been af­fect­ed at the lo­ca­tion. The state­ment said af­ter the site vis­it the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture agreed to un­der­take con­struc­tion of a re­tain­ing wall along that part of the Moru­ga Main Road to pre­vent fur­ther land slip­page.