SASCHA WIL­SON

A third fiery protest this morn­ing, as Gas­par­il­lo res­i­dents call for ur­gent re­pairs to the main road at Morne Roche.  Both the Fire Ser­vice and Po­lice were on the scene.

Block­ing the road with burn­ing tires, the res­i­dents said they will not back down un­til re­pairs com­mence.

"This road af­fect­ing us be­cause we can­not pass on this road. Is wear and tear on your ve­hi­cle. The dri­vers rais­ing their price and we can’t vex with them be­cause they need to fix their ve­hi­cle,” a pro­test­er com­plained.

“If our Prime Min­is­ter was pass­ing on this road, this road would have been fixed. They does on­ly fix the road that the Prime Min­is­ter does see. Is time they do some­thing for the peo­ple and is on­ly poor peo­ple suf­fer­ing be­cause of this right now," the res­i­dent lament­ed.

Morne Roche res­i­dents com­plained that the road has not been re­paired for decades. They took sim­i­lar protest ac­tion on Mon­day and Wednes­day. 

In re­sponse to Wednes­day's protest, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port stat­ed that sec­tion­al road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work on the road was iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­i­ty project for this year and the project is at the de­vel­op­men­tal stage.

The Min­istry al­so not­ed that while it grap­ples with sev­er­al chal­lenges which af­fect its abil­i­ty to meet the im­me­di­ate de­mands of the gen­er­al pub­lic for road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, the High­ways Di­vi­sion will con­tin­ue its pro­gramme of work based on avail­able re­sources and fi­nances.