Sascha Wil­son

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh is hold­ing Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­ble for the death of Coast Guard of­fi­cer Joel Baran, 28, who lost con­trol of his bike and crashed in­to a wall af­ter he went down in a pot­hole along Main Road, Bal­main.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, around 8:05 pm on Wednes­day Baron, 28, was head­ing east along the main road in Bal­main on his red Hon­da CBR 1000.

On reach­ing close to Pre­mi­um Qual­i­ty Meats the front bike wheel dropped in­to a hole on the north­ern side of the road.

He lost con­trol and slammed in­to a wall a few me­ters away. On im­pact he was thrown from the bike and land­ed on the pave­ment. He died on the scene.

At his Preysal Vil­lage home where he lived with his wife and two young chil­dren, his rel­a­tives de­clined to speak.

His col­league and rid­ing part­ner, Brent Cad­dett, who was with him when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, was al­so at the house.

He re­called that they were lim­ing by Roops Junc­tion around 7 pm. They took a ride on the Main Road, stopped off at a bar and then rode off again.

Cad­dett was in front when he sud­den­ly heard a crash. He saw Baron ly­ing on the ground un­con­scious state.

Two doc­tors, who were pass­ing stopped to ren­der aid. They told him his pulse was weak.

“I was try­ing to wake him up while call­ing the am­bu­lance,” he said.

Asked about the pot­hole, he said he felt a thud when he went over the de­pres­sion and sig­naled Baron to be care­ful.

“It have a lit­tle thing in the bike world that when you put your foot out at least a man would know when he see your foot come out he would know dan­ger was there,” said Cadett.

He said his friend was a bet­ter rid­er than him.

“Ap­par­ent­ly how I took it ex­act­ly, I prob­a­bly just got lucky with that and maybe while he was try­ing to ma­neu­ver he lost con­trol, but I don’t even want to say he lost con­trol be­cause he bet­ter than me.”

De­scrib­ing Baron as a good man, a top me­chan­ic and a safe rid­er, he said when they stopped at the bar Baron drank wa­ter.

In a press state­ment yes­ter­day, In­daraingh said, “I lay the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the death of Mr. Baron square­ly at the feet of Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and the Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley.”

The Op­po­si­tion MP said said he has raised the is­sues of poor, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing roads across the con­stituen­cy on in­nu­mer­able oc­ca­sions and lament­ed the state of pot­holes, un­paint­ed humps, open man­holes and the poor qual­i­ty of the road­ways to Sinanan and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein.

In­dars­ingh said, “The death of Mr Baron is the clear­est sig­nal of the dan­ger­ous na­ture of our na­tion’s roads, and the need to hold those in pub­lic of­fice ac­count­able for their con­stant fail­ure and ev­i­dent un­will­ing­ness to pro­vide safe and qual­i­ty road­ways for our cit­i­zens.”

He was hope­ful that no oth­er fam­i­ly has to suf­fer the great loss Baron’s fam­i­ly is go­ing through at this time. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene of the ac­ci­dent, res­i­dents com­plained about the de­plorable con­di­tion of the road.