Just three days be­fore the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, fiery protests erupt­ed in Rio Claro as an­gry res­i­dents voiced their frus­tra­tion over the ab­sence of pipe-borne wa­ter, land ero­sion, and wors­en­ing road con­di­tions. They al­so vowed not to vote on Mon­day in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

Ar­eas af­fect­ed by the protests were St Emelia Street, Ceme­tery Trace, and La Paruse. The protests be­gan be­fore dawn and by the time day­break came, fire­fight­ers and po­lice were hard-pressed to ex­tin­guish the fiery road block­ades. Traf­fic backed up but the an­gry res­i­dents did not back down as they heaped scorn on both the rul­ing PNM and the Op­po­si­tion UNC.

Chant­i­ng, “no wa­ter, no vote,” the res­i­dents said they were fed up with beg­ging politi­cians for help.

Ceme­tery Trace res­i­dent, Bran­don Mod­este said since the road was built, the wa­ter sup­ply be­came ir­reg­u­lar.

“For the past ten years, we ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions to help us with wa­ter. Then we start­ed get­ting land­slips. We lost three hous­es and every time we ask them to help, they say the PNM has not re­leased re­sources,” Mod­este said.

He added: “We are not PNM or UNC, we are the com­mu­ni­ty. Look at this, three months now they haven’t cut the grass at the ceme­tery.”

Mod­este added that on­ly one street light was work­ing and there were dead­ly snakes in over­grown bush­es. 

Keron Clarke, a res­i­dent of St Emelia Road said res­i­dents tried to fix the road them­selves.

“We spend mon­ey to buy pipes two years ago and still we nev­er get help from the cor­po­ra­tion,” he con­tend­ed.

He placed blame for the is­sues in the com­mu­ni­ty at the feet of both the PNM and UNC.

“Paray pass­es here with his Pra­do every day and he nev­er sends any­one to fix the pipes,” Clarke said.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia they were al­so fear­ful about the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of their homes be­cause of the land­slips.

In re­sponse, MP for Ma­yaro, Rush­ton Paray said there were over 100 land­slips in the con­stituen­cy, af­fect­ing dozens of homes. 

He said there had been at­tempts made by the cor­po­ra­tion to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion but fund­ing re­quired for re­pairs re­mained un­avail­able at the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

“As MP for Ma­yaro, I con­tin­ue to call on the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port to ad­dress these and oth­er land­slips ur­gent­ly,” Paray said.

He as­sured the res­i­dents of his con­tin­ued com­mit­ment, promis­ing to “ac­tive­ly lob­by with the state agen­cies con­cern­ing all in­fra­struc­ture is­sues.”

When con­tact­ed Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the min­istry has start­ed a mas­sive road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme where all roads that need­ed re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion were be­ing ad­dressed.

How­ev­er, he said, all could not be done at the same time.

“We recog­nise the frus­tra­tion and in­con­ve­nience but we want to give the as­sur­ance that work is go­ing on around the coun­try day and night and this will con­tin­ue un­til all roads are ad­dressed,” he said.

Mean­while, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of WASA Kelvin Ro­main said there was a pow­er out­age at the Navet Dam which caused a slight de­lay in the wa­ter sup­ply to low-ly­ing ar­eas for 48 hours.