Two days ago, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan had to de­fend his min­istry against al­le­ga­tions of ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion in re­pair­ing land­slips in the south­land. Since the ear­ly 1960s, Dr Win­ston Ma­habir, a found­ing mem­ber of the PNM, wrote of Dr Er­ic Williams’ rur­al ne­glect. He fell out with Williams over in­equities he per­ceived and lat­er mi­grat­ed. Rur­al ne­glect was al­so ad­dressed by the PP gov­ern­ment when roads nev­er paved for decades were giv­en a facelift, al­beit some com­plained at an in­flat­ed cost.

Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Navin Ram­s­ingh gave some of the caus­es of land­slips, such as con­struc­tion his­to­ry of roads; de­for­esta­tion; cli­mate change and wa­ter from rain­fall and leaks from WASA lines, say­ing, “Quite of­ten, our roads are plagued with nu­mer­ous wa­ter leaks and as­so­ci­at­ed de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions caused pri­mar­i­ly by WASA’s fail­ure to car­ry out time­ly and ef­fec­tive road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. WASA has in­di­cat­ed that wa­ter­lines that serve res­i­dents who have con­struct­ed their homes on hills ex­pe­ri­ence a pres­sure high­er than nor­mal and this, to­geth­er with the age of the pipe and oth­er fac­tors, con­tribute to fre­quent leaks.”

Af­ter the re­cent Bar­rack­pore protest, a re­lease from the min­istry stat­ed, “a re­cent as­sess­ment in­di­cat­ed that the Rochard Dou­glas Road is gen­er­al­ly good, de­spite lo­calised fail­ures caused by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.”

It seems one min­istry has tak­en a broad side against an­oth­er. While the sed­u­lous Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, would take cog­nizance of this, cit­i­zens are fed up with hear­ing the same di­a­logue for years. They need ac­tion, not old talk.

I was ap­palled when the host of the Re­al Talk ca­ble pro­gramme, Mr Saieed Ali , showed a video of a road in George Vil­lage, Table­land, which looked like a roller­coast­er. There is no way an am­bu­lance can ac­cess a pa­tient who has COVID or an­oth­er emer­gency in a time­ly man­ner.

While is­sues like cli­mate change are be­yond the Min­is­ter’s con­trol, land­slips will in­crease and we need proac­tive in­spec­tions from the road works de­part­ment, as well as cit­i­zens be­ing able to high­light any land slip­page to get the at­ten­tion of their lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives or min­istry of­fi­cials.

Im­prop­er drainage from pri­vate prop­er­ties, not hav­ing enough green­ery and build­ing on riv­er banks are in­frac­tions the au­thor­i­ties can pun­ish.

Speak­ing about a land­slip at San Fran­cique Road, which was not re­paired since 2014, the head of the BLT Unit, Ma­hadeo Jagdeo, said this was due to con­tin­ued non-per­for­mance by a con­trac­tor and NID­CO, had to repack­age and re-ten­der to a new con­trac­tor.

In Charles Kong Soo’s ar­ti­cle pub­lished in last Sun­day’s Guardian, Cur­tis Seep­er­sad, pres­i­dent of the ATTH, not­ed that some con­trac­tors were not us­ing the right ra­tio of bi­tu­men with the as­phalt mix.

For­mer Lake As­phalt chair­man Kuar­lal Ram­per­sad al­so spoke to “some un­scrupu­lous con­trac­tors who did sub­stan­dard road works us­ing a poor mix­ture of as­phalt, ag­gre­gate, and bi­tu­men to en­sure that the roads didn’t last longer than three to five years and if they used the right mix­ture the roads will last over 20 years, con­trac­tors hired by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture should pro­vide Qual­i­ty As­sur­ance and Con­trol on their road paving mix­es.”

The pub­lic needs to know which con­trac­tors have giv­en this coun­try a bad deal. We need to black­list them pub­licly. Some cit­i­zens are scep­ti­cal and be­lieve some sort of cor­rup­tion can oc­cur when­ev­er a new con­tract is giv­en. To pre­vent this al­le­ga­tion, I sug­gest that with all pend­ing con­tracts, the names of the di­rec­tors of the com­pa­nies should be pub­lished along with the scope of work. Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion needs to be in place and who­ev­er gives us these ques­tion­able con­tracts, if proven to be against pub­lic in­ter­est, should be held ac­count­able. The old ex­cuse of cost over­runs caus­ing an in­creased pay­out shows due dili­gence was not done on some projects.

The gov­ern­ment of Cana­da has Guide­lines on Proac­tive Dis­clo­sure of Con­tracts, a part of their Ac­tion Plan on Open Gov­ern­ment, where they are com­mit­ted to the dis­clo­sure of con­tract­ing da­ta via a cen­tralised data­base avail­able to the pub­lic. This is in ad­di­tion to the dis­clo­sure of vol­ume and cu­mu­la­tive dol­lar val­ue of all ac­qui­si­tion card trans­ac­tions re­gard­less of dol­lar val­ue.

We need such proac­tive dis­clo­sure as part of the new ethics of do­ing busi­ness, be it min­is­te­r­i­al ex­pen­di­ture or re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion ex­pen­di­ture.

Some can be­come ex­perts at break­ing up a ma­jor con­tract just to be un­der the radar. Cor­rup­tion is an ob­struc­tion to eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment, it is time we get prop­er lead­er­ship and man­age­ment to weed it out.

To put an end to this re­peat­ed al­le­ga­tion of rur­al ne­glect, I look for­ward to Ram­s­ingh’s an­nounce­ment that the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion will im­ple­ment a pol­i­cy for de­vel­op­ment in the south­ern re­gion of Trinidad sim­i­lar to that of the ex­ist­ing Hill­side/North­ern Re­gion Pol­i­cy.