Four fam­i­lies at Hodge Trace, St Au­gus­tine are call­ing on the Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to re­pair a gi­gan­tic hole which is un­der­min­ing the foun­da­tion of the road, as well as one prop­er­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, pen­sion­er Pel­ham Julien said he has been speak­ing to of­fi­cials at the Cor­po­ra­tion since June 9th, 2022 with the hope that the re­pairs could be done. The road falls un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Cor­po­ra­tion.

“They in­formed me that they can­not do any­thing with­out the Chair­man’s ap­proval. This large hole in the road needs emer­gency re­pairs be­cause if noth­ing is done, the road will col­lapse,” Pel­ham said.

He ex­plained that a team of of­fi­cials in­clud­ing Cor­po­ra­tion en­gi­neers vis­it­ed the site this year and agreed it was dan­ger­ous.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, sev­er­al parts of the road were float­ing as the sur­face runoff had un­der­mined parts of the foun­da­tion.

Julien said the drainage al­so needs ur­gent work.

“The prob­lem has grown more dis­as­trous from last year to now and all we get are promis­es in this com­mu­ni­ty. It is sad at the treat­ment met­ed out by the very peo­ple we have sup­port­ed for so many years,” Julien said.

He ex­plained that the drainage has al­ready start­ed erod­ing his prop­er­ty which bor­ders the sur­face drain.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the chair­man of the Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Kwasi Robin­son said he be­came aware of the prob­lem on Feb­ru­ary 12th 2023.

“En­gi­neers have vis­it­ed the area and so far we have con­duct­ed an es­ti­mate so those re­pairs are about to be ex­e­cut­ed,” he said.

He not­ed that the re­pairs will be done in­ter­nal­ly.

“This project does not have to be ten­dered. We have our own con­struc­tion team which is in Wharf Trace and af­ter that, they will go to Hodge Trace,” he said.

He ex­plained a cross­ing has to be built and once the re­pairs are done, WASA will have to be called in to en­sure that in­fra­struc­ture is not im­pact­ed.

Robin­son said while he was sym­pa­thet­ic to the plight of the res­i­dents, the de­liv­ery of projects by the Cor­po­ra­tion is some­times prob­lem­at­ic.

“That is why we are em­bark­ing on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form and the sec­ondary roads com­pa­ny. We are work­ing on im­prov­ing our de­liv­ery,” Robin­son said.He re­it­er­at­ed that he has al­ready tak­en steps to fix the road is­sues at Hodge Trace, not­ing that the con­struc­tion works will be­gin soon.