RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A day af­ter South Oropouche res­i­dents staged protests over pot­holes left by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says he will hold man­agers to ac­count when pro­to­cols fail.

WASA has come un­der pub­lic con­dem­na­tion for dig­ging up new­ly paved roads to fix leaks and not do­ing restora­tion work af­ter­wards.

This hap­pened at Har­ris Vil­lage South Oropouche op­po­site the ceme­tery, which has now be­come a sin­gle lane due to the pot­holes.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said he re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port about the pot­holed road,

"I was in­formed that be­cause of a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the dis­trict lev­el, the area man­ag­er from WASA did not at­tend to the mat­ter with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism ex­pect­ed," he re­vealed.

He added:

"There is in place a ro­bust sys­tem to ad­dress leaks and road restora­tion ex­pe­di­tious­ly,".

Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said, fol­low­ing the protest, he in­tend­ed to take fur­ther ac­tion to en­sure that restora­tion pro­to­cols are in place.

"I will re­quest of the Board to hold man­agers to ac­count when they ne­glect to fol­low ap­proved pro­to­cols," he added.

On Wednes­day dur­ing protests, the res­i­dent pre­tend­ed to fish in­side the pot­hole to show the size and depth. They used a buck­et to bail out wa­ter from the pot­hole to show the vol­ume of wa­ter which gath­ers in­side the hole when­ev­er it rains.

Coun­cil­lor for Av­o­cat /San Fran­cique Dood­nath Mayrhoo said there con­tin­ues to be a wa­ter­leak op­po­site the Oropouche ceme­tery. He called on WASA to fix 15 pot­holes from Har­ris Vil­lage to Fyz­abad which were all dug up and left un­at­tend­ed by WASA.

Mayrhoo al­so said 50 feet away from the pot­hole, the Solomon Ho­choy High­way was paved. He ques­tioned why the Works Min­istry did not see it fit to pave the road.

Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe pro­duced sev­er­al let­ters dat­ed since 2021 in which he asked the Min­istry to fix the road near the ceme­tery, long be­fore it be­came one-way. He al­so called for the restora­tion of the road­way from South­ern Main Road to Ralph Nar­ine Trace. Dr Bo­doe said the road to Fyz­abad was "in a per­ilous state" and he said there could be loss of life if the pot­holes were not re­paired soon.

On June 22, last year, Min­is­ter Sinanan spoke in Par­lia­ment and said a leak­ing wa­ter line on the op­po­site side of the road had re­sult­ed in sat­u­ra­tion of the road and the em­bank­ment. He said the road was re­paired by WASA and the sched­uled road re­pair work in that area was card­ed for the end of June. How­ev­er, that was nev­er done.

Asked when the road will be fixed on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter Sinanan said all roads un­der the Min­istry will be fixed based on a for­mu­la and sub­ject to the al­lo­ca­tion of fund­ing from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.