CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Boodoo High­way, Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande, are fed up with the bad road and poor drainage in their area and ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to end their plight.

Al­though they held protests in the past, the de­plorable con­di­tion of the roads con­tin­ues un­abat­ed.

Res­i­dents liv­ing along the stretch of Boodoo High­way vent­ed their anger and frus­tra­tion on­line by post­ing pho­tographs of wa­ter-filled pot­holes, many as wide as a car, cra­ter­ing the length of the road.

Ron­nie Sar­dine, one of the res­i­dents, post­ed "Bad roads in Grande! This is what the tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens of Boodoo High­way, Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande, have to deal with for years!! Elec­tions and gov­ern­ments come and go and no help!"

Faced with this plight, res­i­dents are call­ing on the Min­istry of Works to re­pair the road. How­ev­er, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­pairs to Boodoo High­way is out­side the min­istry's re­mit.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day, chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Anil Juter­am de­scribed Boodoo High­way as an or­phan road as "there is no vest­ed in­ter­est un­der the MOWT (Min­istry of Works and Trans­port). "

"As the coun­cil­lor for the area (Ve­ga de Oropouche) I in­her­it­ed that road, but that nev­er de­terred me from look­ing af­ter my con­stituents and the road...I nev­er turned my back on them.

"As you can see on my web­site, through­out the years I've been con­tin­u­ous­ly beg­ging for as­sis­tance with MOWT, and Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan in an in­ter­view said that was an or­phan road and does not fall un­der the purview of the min­istry."

He said when a road was not vest­ed un­der the cor­po­ra­tion or the MOWT there is of­ten ma­jor de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the in­fra­struc­ture.

Juter­am said that Boodoo High­way was a ma­jor artery in terms of an emer­gency route–if some cri­sis oc­curred af­fect­ing peo­ple in San­gre Chiq­ui­to or Man­zanil­la, they can en­ter Boodoo High­way and come out by Oropouche Road and in­to San­gre Grande and vice ver­sa.

He said dur­ing his tenure as coun­cil­lor the road had been re­paired in crit­i­cal ar­eas but suf­fered be­cause of a lack of ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture such as prop­er drainage.

There are oth­er rea­sons for the con­di­tion of the road such as some res­i­dents not com­ply­ing with any town and coun­try reg­u­la­tions, poor drainage and in­fra­struc­ture caus­ing run-off wa­ter to dam­age the road. Some peo­ple built DIY drains or erect­ed earth­en drains and cast drains across their dri­ve­ways in front of their hous­es block­ing runoff wa­ter.

The chair­man said he had all these is­sues to deal with in his ca­pac­i­ty as a coun­cil­lor with lim­it­ed fund­ing.

For the past four years, he said, the cor­po­ra­tion has been starved for funds from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Juter­am said, how­ev­er, de­spite fund­ing con­straints, the cor­po­ra­tion still man­aged to un­der­take sev­er­al de­vel­op­ment projects such as paving crit­i­cal sec­tions of Boodoo High­way in phas­es and con­struct­ing box drains.

He said he utilised re­sources for cor­po­ra­tion-vest­ed roads to re­pair or­phan roads for the ben­e­fit of the burgess­es and peo­ple.

He said at times he had asked li­cenced quar­ry own­ers to as­sist him with road con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als such as crush­er run, chips and hot mix to pave parts of the road two to three years ago, but that has now be­come erod­ed.

Juter­am said that the road was al­so be­ing dam­aged by heavy-load trucks, and he will be plac­ing no ad­mit­tance signs for ten and 12-ton trucks on the sides of the road.

He has al­ready asked a bene­fac­tor to do­nate some much-need­ed road paving ma­te­r­i­al as the cor­po­ra­tion's stock­pile is de­plet­ed.

Once the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceives the ma­te­r­i­al, Juter­am said, they will start patch­ing the roads.

He sent a clip of the con­di­tion of the Boodoo High­way road­way to the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi ask­ing for a meet­ing with him to get some as­sis­tance from his min­istry as the area.

Juter­am said he would like San­gre Grande to come in for se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion by the re­cent­ly formed road-re­pair com­pa­ny.

Calls to Al-Rawi went unan­swered.