Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) says it has reached the pro­cure­ment stage for re­pairs to in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems at River­side South Corinth De­vel­op­ment, but res­i­dents are con­cerned that con­di­tions are de­te­ri­o­rat­ing dai­ly.

The res­i­dents have com­plained about a col­lapsed sec­tion of road, poor drainage that caus­es flood­ing, and the ab­sence of re­tain­ing walls along the riv­er, which they say has led to ero­sion of near­by prop­er­ties, as well as the de­plorable road con­di­tions.

They have since cor­doned off the col­lapsed sec­tion of road, as well as an­oth­er road­way that has be­come im­pass­able. Ear­li­er this week, HDC con­firmed that the pro­posed works were at the pro­cure­ment stage, and once a com­mence­ment date was fi­nalised, res­i­dents would be in­formed.

Home­own­er Jevon Chap­man said HDC’s Fa­cil­i­ties Es­tate Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd) had been very re­spon­sive, and on Mon­day, a team had con­duct­ed as­sess­ments. How­ev­er, he said, the road con­tin­ued to crum­ble.

“The way it is pro­gress­ing, if noth­ing is done with­in the next week or two, the whole road­way will be in­to the riv­er, not on­ly on this side, but where the prop­er­ties line the riv­er. They need to put a re­tain­ing wall, put in­fra­struc­ture with­in the wa­ter­way. That is crit­i­cal and im­me­di­ate.”

An­oth­er home­own­er, Lara Dow­ell, chair­man of the Riverdale South Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, praised the fa­cil­i­ties com­pa­ny’s re­sponse and feed­back to their con­cerns.

How­ev­er, she said they had yet to re­ceive any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the scope of work. In ad­di­tion to the col­laps­ing road and re­tain­ing walls, Dow­ell high­light­ed sev­er­al oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fects in the com­mu­ni­ty that re­quired im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

Com­plain­ing about the de­plorable con­di­tion of the roads, she said, “In ad­di­tion to the riv­er, it al­so has wa­ter­cours­es to the back of peo­ple’s homes on both sides of the sin­gle-fam­i­ly units that are dam­ag­ing per­sons’ homes, and we don’t want HDC to miss that. We ab­solute­ly need the in­fra­struc­ture along the river­way, but they al­so need to pay at­ten­tion to the in­fra­struc­ture to the back of homes that were not done prop­er­ly.”

She said wa­ter was flow­ing from the re­tain­ing walls be­hind some prop­er­ties, seep­ing in­to homes, loos­en­ing floor tiles, and caus­ing mould to form on the walls.

She added that due to poor drainage some homes are be­ing flood­ed. The HDC has in­di­cat­ed that res­i­dents would be in­formed once the re­pair works were ready to com­mence.

In the ini­tial re­lease, fol­low­ing the res­i­dents’ com­plaints, HDC said the res­i­dents for­mal­ly lodged com­plaints about the land­slide on Sep­tem­ber 17.

HDC in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter was im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed to its sub­sidiary, the Fa­cil­i­ties Es­tate Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, which works in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the River­side South Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny to ad­dress such in­ci­dents.