To­co/Va­len­cia East coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don is con­vinced the protest over a land­slip in Matelot was meant to make the Gov­ern­ment look bad.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the site of the land­slip yes­ter­day, Ron­don ex­plained that soon af­ter the land­slip oc­curred in the area, a crew was sent by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to work on re­pair­ing the dam­age and en­sure res­i­dents had ac­cess in and out of the area.

De­spite this, a few vil­lagers staged a protest on Tues­day claim­ing the vil­lage of Matelot was cut off, schools af­fect­ed and res­i­dents strand­ed.

“This is a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter and I first want to thank Almighty God that we didn’t have any loss of life. Last week Fri­day, I got a call that the road was im­pass­able at this 47 and three-quar­ter mile mark. I im­me­di­ate­ly called my MP and he was on the ball right away. He called Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and we had equip­ment come up and they start­ed work­ing but this hill with the land­slip is over 65 feet and the soil keeps com­ing down be­cause there’s a spring on top,” Ron­don said.

He added: “The more the ex­ca­va­tor work, the more the de­bris comes in­to the road­way but we were able to ask the con­trac­tor to clear the road. We knew Mon­day, the school would be open, which they did, but some of the teach­ers use the oc­ca­sion, they didn’t come out Mon­day and they used the oc­ca­sion to say they weren’t pass­ing.“

Ron­don not­ed that the ter­rain along the North Coast Road, where many vil­lages are, will al­ways be a chal­lenge.

“It’s very dan­ger­ous for ve­hi­cles, it is com­ing down all the time but I know the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is here and the en­gi­neers and we will take ad­vice from the en­gi­neers,” he said.

But vil­lagers like Michelle Mar­shall said it was not a time for fin­ger-point­ing.

“The land­slip is no fault of us, we un­der­stand that it is na­ture but vil­lagers had to com­plain be­cause the dirt was con­tin­u­ing to come down. The teach­ers are not com­ing who work out­side of the vil­lage due to the land­slide and this is a re­al con­cern for many in the area, as chil­dren are not get­ting their ed­u­ca­tion.”

Matelot Vil­lage Coun­cil pres­i­dent Michael Mar­shall added, “The protest was a re­sult of peo­ple be­ing re­al­ly frus­trat­ed for a long time and when you’re un­der pres­sure for a long time, you can’t tell which part of the pipe will bust. So, when it busts, you know how to fix it and make sure you fix it, so this is the whole process we’re in right now fix­ing it, fix­ing our voice, that was just re­leased from the frus­tra­tion.”

He ad­mit­ted some com­ments made dur­ing the protest were poor, es­pe­cial­ly since ef­forts to as­sist are un­der­way.

Min­istry of Works and Trans­port of­fi­cials yes­ter­day could not give a time­line as to when the ma­jor thor­ough­fares will be cleared.