Up­per Cas­cade Val­ley Road res­i­dents say they are frus­trat­ed with the au­thor­i­ties over in­fra­struc­ture is­sues in their com­mu­ni­ty. 

They said they are par­tic­u­lar­ly up­set about the con­di­tion of a track that was promised to be de­vel­oped in­to a prop­er road, more than a decade ago.

One res­i­dent, Den­nis Cuffie told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that de­spite nu­mer­ous let­ters and com­plaints, they have not seen any ac­tion from their lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

He ex­pressed frus­tra­tion, say­ing res­i­dents don’t even know who the coun­cil­lor is since they do not come in­to the area. Cuffie high­light­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by his el­der­ly moth­er, who is soon turn­ing 87 and has to be lift­ed across a riv­er due to the lack of prop­er road ac­cess.

He ex­plained that the road has ad­di­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing land ero­sion and a pre­car­i­ous elec­tri­cal pole that could po­ten­tial­ly cut off the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty if it falls.

Cuffie said de­spite com­plaints and meet­ings with Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young, res­i­dents re­main un­hap­py and are not sat­is­fied with the pro­posed so­lu­tions, which he de­scribed as in­ad­e­quate. 

He is par­tic­u­lar­ly up­set about what he called the lack of re­sponse from au­thor­i­ties. Cuffie ques­tioned if res­i­dents had to protest to at­tract at­ten­tion and bring re­sults.

Di­anne Sul­li­van, a life­long res­i­dent of Cas­cade Val­ley Road, al­so shared her frus­tra­tions. 

She claimed that re­cent­ly a neigh­bour’s heart at­tack and a cousin’s med­ical emer­gency were ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the poor road con­di­tions. 

Sul­li­van was crit­i­cal of MP Young, who she claimed, said there was no mon­ey for road re­pairs.

She added that de­spite res­i­dents’ con­sis­tent sup­port for the rul­ing par­ty—the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the com­mu­ni­ty feels ne­glect­ed.

Sul­li­van point­ed out that trans­port­ing gro­ceries and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als has be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult and cost­ly due to the poor road con­di­tions. 

She said, like her, many res­i­dents have deep roots in the com­mu­ni­ty and would like to have a prop­er ac­cess road.

Calls to Young and the Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne for a com­ment went unan­swered.