Sascha Wil­son

Fear­ful that their com­mu­ni­ty will soon be cut off, res­i­dents of Pooran Road, George Vil­lage, Table­land, are plead­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to re­pair the land­slips on the road.

This af­ter heavy rain­fall this week re­sult­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of an­oth­er ma­jor land­slip along the road which res­i­dents say is the worst they have seen so far.

For a month, the garbage truck has stopped ser­vic­ing the area, which al­so has a pri­ma­ry school, and now they fear emer­gency and util­i­ty ve­hi­cles will al­so be un­able to ac­cess the com­mu­ni­ty.

Res­i­dent Ricky Ram­jat­tan, who lives be­tween two ma­jor land­slips, said the res­i­dents are frus­trat­ed.

"The is­sue we hav­ing in this road is all the ma­jor land­slips we have here caus­ing chaos for us to go out every morn­ing, be­cause our ve­hi­cles touch­ing and if rain fall we don't know when we can get to come back if we leave 4 o' clock in the morn­ing to go out," he said.

He added, "If it have sick peo­ple in the back here no­body com­ing in, so that is the ma­jor chal­lenge what we have in this road right now."

Since the garbage truck stopped work­ing in the area, he said every morn­ing he puts his garbage bags in his ve­hi­cle and dumps them on his way to work.

Lament­ing that res­i­dents are feel­ing ne­glect­ed, he said, "It is get­ting very frus­trat­ing, re­al bad..."

He said re­cent­ly, there was an ac­ci­dent at one of the land­slips but for­tu­nate­ly, the mo­torist was not se­ri­ous­ly in­jured.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Ram­saran Sarab­jit, said for sev­en years he has been ask­ing the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion for a prop­er drainage sys­tem.

"I think the ma­jor cause of this is be­cause of the wa­ter, so the wa­ter com­ing from both sides and have nowhere to go, so it re­main­ing here and this is the cause right here. If they had fixed the box drain we wouldn't have this prob­lem to­day. I ask­ing them to come and chan­nel the wa­ter in the prop­er di­rec­tion...," he said.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin said the road is a cir­cu­lar that con­nects the Ants Nest com­mu­ni­ty on the Man­ta­cool Road but this was no longer pos­si­ble due to land­slips. She said there were five ma­jor land­slips af­fect­ing over 50 res­i­dents and jeop­ar­dis­ing four homes.

"It is, I would say, a death com­mute be­cause you’re putting your prop­er­ty at risk, you’re putting your life at risk. I am ask­ing them to be care­ful, but I know they are at a point that they have no choice. Many would have ex­pressed their frus­tra­tion and, as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, I lis­ten at­ten­tive­ly and I have been reach­ing out to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty, plead­ing on be­half of my con­stituents, that we need to get some­thing done," Ben­jamin added.

Com­plain­ing that the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion has no fund­ing, she said they are try­ing to source ma­te­r­i­al to bring tem­po­rary re­lief to the res­i­dent.

"I am here call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, you were giv­en that ex­cess bud­get of $200 mil­lion in the new com­pa­ny and I’m ask­ing you to utilise some to sta­bilise and bring re­lief to my con­stituents in Pooran Road, George Vil­lage," she plead­ed.

How­ev­er, she in­di­cat­ed that the min­istry is con­duct­ing works at one of the land­slips near the pri­ma­ry school.