Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Two weeks ago, an am­bu­lance was un­able to get to a pa­tient be­cause of the state of the Bras­so Tamana Main Road. Yes­ter­day, the moth­er of a new­born ba­by was forced to walk to the dis­trict health cen­tre.

Lak­sh­mi Ali, who lives in Bras­so Ve­na­do, had to car­ry her in­fant for her first shot at the Flana­gin Town Health Cen­tre, which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en kilo­me­tres away.

“This is what we have to go through to get to the clin­ic, to car­ry my child to the clin­ic. We are plead­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to come to help us out,” Ali said.

A group of res­i­dents staged a protest near the land­slide yes­ter­day. Among them was pres­i­dent of the Bras­so Ve­na­do Vil­lage Coun­cil, Mar­i­lyn Vil­lafana, who ex­pressed con­cern that the vil­lage has been for­got­ten.

“In my 65 years, this is the first time we have ever en­coun­tered some­thing like this. If an am­bu­lance has to come, they can­not pass, and we’ll have to die. If T&TEC has to come, they will not be able to pass. We’re go­ing back in time,” she said.

“If WASA has to pass, it’s the same thing, there’s no wa­ter present­ly. Even the garbage truck is no longer com­ing. What will we do? We’ll have a cor­beau vil­lage just now.”

An­oth­er ma­jor con­cern for res­i­dents is ac­cess to the Bras­so Ve­na­do Pri­ma­ry School. Since the last week in No­vem­ber, the school has been closed due to poor road con­di­tions. The road­way is im­pass­able for ve­hi­cles and the dis­tance is too far to walk.

“We know that dur­ing these COVID times, schools were closed, and now these in­no­cent chil­dren have to go through the same thing again, be­cause of ne­glect by per­sons in au­thor­i­ty. What we are see­ing here was a sim­ple crack that has turned in­to a ma­jor land­slide af­fect­ing the lives of the res­i­dents. We can­not go out to make a dai­ly liv­ing, plus our ve­hi­cles are be­ing af­fect­ed neg­a­tive­ly,” 61-year-old res­i­dent, Mary Mal­oney, said.

Not too far from the school is Ra­moutar Lunch Cen­tre Lim­it­ed, a cater­er at­tached to the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, which ser­vices sev­en schools in the re­gion.

Co-founder of the cen­tre, Rayan Ra­moutar, said: “Sup­pli­ers can­not come to pro­vide goods and ser­vices. The school nu­tri­tion of­fi­cers who usu­al­ly vis­it the cen­tre and do eval­u­a­tions and mon­i­tor­ing of the meals, are un­able to vis­it. The lunch vans are un­able to take the meals to the chil­dren. The na­tion’s chil­dren are suf­fer­ing. We are not even sure if it could be re­opened come Jan­u­ary.”

Oth­er protest­ing res­i­dents ex­pressed frus­tra­tion at the patched-up re­pairs done by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT).

“Some­body in au­thor­i­ty dropped a load of ma­te­r­i­al and left it right there, as to say to the vil­lagers, ‘If you all want, you all could pack and pass, if not, you all stay home’. That is the kind of mes­sage we are get­ting, to­tal ne­glect and aban­don­ment,” Mal­oney said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent who was pil­ing the ma­te­r­i­al around noon when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed said they would have to do so again in a few hours.

“By 6 o’clock this evening, we will have to come and tote things here to pass, and in the morn­ing when we come out, we have to do it again. Right now, they dropped two loads and that’s fin­ished, we don’t know when they’ll drop two loads again for us to use again. We are the ma­chines for them, they’re just drop­ping ma­te­r­i­al and we have to do things with our hands,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said the project was ten­dered and eval­u­a­tion is in progress, so the con­tract is ex­pect­ed to be award­ed this week. Mean­while, he said, the con­nec­tiv­i­ty of the road­way will be main­tained by the MOWT’s in-house team. He added that he was in­formed about fur­ther slip­page on Mon­day which is be­ing ad­dressed.