Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With­in the space of eight years, three homes have been de­stroyed due to land move­ment, leav­ing three broth­ers and their fam­i­lies with nowhere to call their own.

Their homes at Sa­ha­dath Road, Princes Town, have all crum­bled, al­leged­ly as a re­sult of a leak­ing wa­ter line.

For Tara­dath Bridge­mo­han, 47, his wife, Meera, 43, and their three chil­dren, ages 21, 16 and nine, it’s been a heart­break­ing cy­cle of loss and un­cer­tain­ty.

The fam­i­ly lived in all three hous­es—the last one col­lapsed around 6.30 am yes­ter­day.

Their three-storey home, which took 16 years to com­plete, was the first to go in 2017.

They re­lo­cat­ed next door to his broth­er’s home, but not long af­ter, they were forced to leave when that house be­gan shift­ing.

Bridge­mo­han and his fam­i­ly then moved in­to his par­ents’ home across the street in 2022. His broth­er and his wife lived down­stairs. But late last No­vem­ber, the fam­i­ly again had to pack up and leave af­ter the house—which had stood for 40 years—be­gan crum­bling.

A kind neigh­bour has al­lowed them to stay in his home, but they had to leave their pets—two dogs and sev­en birds—be­hind. Most of their fur­ni­ture and be­long­ings were left in the garage at his par­ents’ home and at the near­by mandir, which is al­so in jeop­ardy of col­laps­ing.

As he tried to con­tain his emo­tions dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bridge­mo­han lament­ed, “I fed up. I fed up.”

He said they made re­peat­ed com­plaints to WASA and knocked on sev­er­al doors seek­ing as­sis­tance, but to no avail.

“When we went to the al­leged or­gan­i­sa­tion, WASA, we were al­ways told that they are not see­ing any over­head leaks. How­ev­er, some­time in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary, we saw a leak in front. WASA came and had it re­paired. Some­time, a month again we saw the leak again, WASA had it re­paired.”

“We are fed up. It is not one house. Is not two house, is three hous­es. Three fam­i­lies are be­ing dis­placed be­cause of this. My el­der broth­er, his wife, and my younger broth­er and his wife.”

For Bridge­mo­han’s fam­i­ly, it has been a re­cur­ring night­mare, and he now feels a sense of hope­less­ness.

“We don’t know who to ask for help for the hous­es. WASA is say­ing they need to see some ev­i­dence of their wa­ter on their line is leak­ing. Now that we have sol­id ev­i­dence, who we could go to ask for help?”

While he has tried to be strong for his fam­i­ly, he said the sit­u­a­tion is heart­break­ing and they need com­pen­sa­tion to be able to re­build their lives.

The land­slip that de­stroyed two of the hous­es, in­clud­ing Bridge­mo­han’s, has since been re­paired, and there is no ev­i­dence that the homes once stood there. How­ev­er, an­oth­er land­slip has de­vel­oped across the road.

“We don’t know who to go to be­cause if you go to a le­gal ad­vi­sor, we don’t have the mon­ey to pay.”

Res­i­dent De­osaran Singh, who lives be­hind the mandir, com­plained that he was liv­ing in fear that his house would al­so be de­stroyed.

Not­ing that just last Thurs­day his tank col­lapsed, he said, “I have a lil son. He gone to school to­day. He can’t sleep com­fort­able in the night be­cause the slight­est noise you hear you get­ting up to see what caus­ing the prob­lem,” lament­ed Singh.

Mean­while, Moru­ga/Table­land MP and Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Michelle Ben­jamin, said rep­re­sen­ta­tives from her of­fice vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day. She said she had pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed the site and re­port­ed a sus­pect­ed wa­ter leak as a like­ly cause of the land in­sta­bil­i­ty.

She al­so not­ed that with the clo­sure of Mandin­go Road, Sa­ha­dath Road has be­come one of the main ac­cess routes in this part of the con­stituen­cy, mak­ing ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion not just a mat­ter of com­pas­sion but of pub­lic safe­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“I will con­tin­ue to press the rel­e­vant min­istries for im­me­di­ate sup­port and re­main com­mit­ted to do­ing all I can to as­sist the fam­i­ly and pro­tect the wider com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

WASA re­sponds

In re­sponse WASA de­nied the al­le­ga­tion, stat­ing that the pipeline was de­com­mis­sioned to pre­vent on­go­ing dam­age by land move­ment.

In a state­ment, the au­thor­i­ty not­ed that the Sa­ha­dath Road area has been prone to land­slips for sev­er­al years, re­sult­ing in not on­ly dam­age to prop­er­ties in the vicin­i­ty of the slip­page but al­so the

pipeline in­fra­struc­ture.

As such, WASA said it has been mon­i­tor­ing the area close­ly and on 

each oc­cur­rence of dam­age to the pipeline due to land move­ment, it has re­spond­ed prompt­ly to iso­late the sup­ply and ef­fect the nec­es­sary re­pairs.

It said for this year there were three such oc­ca­sions: the first on Jan­u­ary 8, which was iso­lat­ed and re­paired on the same day. The sec­ond was June 4, which was al­so iso­lat­ed and re­paired on the same day.  On June 14,  WASA stat­ed that it re­spond­ed to an­oth­er leak re­port­ed on 

that day, at which time the pipeline was de­com­mis­sioned be­fore the land­slip, to pre­vent fur­ther breaks due to on­go­ing land move­ment. 

WASA, how­ev­er, stat­ed that it con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor this sit­u­a­tion close­ly while li­ais­ing with cus­tomers and oth­er stake­hold­ers, re­gard­ing on­go­ing de­vel­op­ments.