RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers have been post­ed at the Mos­qui­to Creek site fol­low­ing re­ports of the col­lapse of 180 me­tres of paved road­way and the par­tial col­lapse of a sea­side revet­ment wall.

Guardian Me­dia has been mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments at the site fol­low­ing the fail­ure of the in­fra­struc­ture last week­end.

The area was bar­ri­cad­ed on Wednes­day and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel pre­vent­ed the me­dia from cap­tur­ing fresh footage. Traf­fic con­tin­ued to flow on a two-kilo­me­tre stretch of the south­bound car­riage­way which was opened in 2019.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie has called on the gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly halt con­struc­tion and in­stead fo­cus on build­ing prop­er in­fra­struc­ture to ac­com­mo­date the wa­ter flow from the near­by marsh­lands in­to the sea.

“It has got­ten worse. There is a sand­bank form­ing in the Gulf of Paria that is about 50 feet to 75 feet from where the high­way is sink­ing. The pres­sure of grav­el is push­ing un­der and com­ing out in the soft­est area. We mea­sured the crack on the walls and it is 30 feet longer than it was yes­ter­day,” Mood­ie said.

He added, “The en­tire wall is pulling on both sides. There is grad­ing tak­ing place. Work­ers are fill­ing grav­el in­to the holes. We need auger pil­ing and we need to brace the walls to hold the weight of the wa­ter that is com­ing in. We are ask­ing the au­thor­i­ties to stop cov­er­ing it up. Let the cit­i­zens know the facts.

Mood­ie took the me­dia on a tour last Sep­tem­ber and showed high­way de­bris lit­ter­ing the man­groves. He said one of the rivers which drain the man­grove had come to a dead stop on the high­way. The White Bridge Riv­er had been nar­rowed to one foot.

Mean­while, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal called for a Com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the col­lapse of the high­way.

“To my un­der­stand­ing of the el­e­ments of con­struc­tion there is a pro­vi­sion for an in­sur­ance to cov­er in­ci­dents of this kind but fun­da­men­tal­ly it is tax­pay­ers mon­ey that goes down the drain and it will be tax pay­ers mon­ey that will have to fix this prob­lem and re­ha­bil­i­tate Pack­age 5A. The Min­is­ter must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and this can on­ly be done in­de­pen­dent­ly through a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry,” Mooni­lal said.

He added, “They want to cut costs, use cheap ma­te­ri­als and do sub­stan­dard work...This has to do with the de­ci­sions of the Row­ley gov­ern­ment, NID­CO and the con­trac­tors.”

Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia that he is await­ing a re­port from NID­CO fol­low­ing which he will give a de­tailed com­ment. He said the fail­ure zone has not af­fect­ed com­muters not­ing that de­sign­ers were do­ing a “de­tailed re­view of ge­ot­ech­ni­cal as­sump­tions to gen­er­ate a rel­e­vant site-spe­cif­ic so­lu­tion.”