JESSE RAMDEO

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A ma­jor land­slip is not on­ly the largest of over a dozen along the South­ern Main Road but one of sev­er­al is­sues for res­i­dents of Chatham and en­vi­rons. Ero­sion along both sides of the road­way at the 96-kilo­me­tre mark is al­so a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.

Stag­ing a protest to high­light their dis­tress yes­ter­day, many de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a tick­ing time bomb. The ma­jor fear right now for the res­i­dents is that they may soon be dis­con­nect­ed from the rest of the coun­try if weath­er con­di­tions wors­en.

Taxi dri­ver Ar­shad Ali said the land­slip has been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing at an alarm­ing rate.

“We don’t know if we could make it, if our ve­hi­cles could go down in there, you can see the cracks and it’s not one side, it’s both sides of the road col­laps­ing,” Ali said.

Granville res­i­dent Sunil Sookram said nu­mer­ous calls for the rel­e­vant min­is­ters to pay ur­gent at­ten­tion to the col­laps­ing road­way have fall­en on deaf ears.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is a ge­ol­o­gist, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is an en­gi­neer and they take the two sense to­geth­er and they give Ro­han Sinanan it, which is non­sense. They not do­ing noth­ing for no­body in Trinidad, watch the con­di­tion of the road,” Sookram said.

The land­slide has im­pact­ed the in­tegri­ty of the sin­gle-lane road­way to the point where heavy ve­hi­cles no longer risk pass­ing. As a re­sult, thou­sands of res­i­dents be­yond Chatham are with­out ac­cess to cer­tain es­sen­tial items.

Fish ven­dor Kendel Mood­ie said mem­bers of the fish­er­folk com­mu­ni­ty were among the hard­est af­fect­ed, as get­ting gaso­line is now a chal­lenge.

“Look at the dis­tress they putting us through right now. We have to leave Ce­dros and go Point (Fortin) and even Erin, La Brea all about to full gas to try and fa­cil­i­tate the fish­er­men be­cause they out­side fish­ing and we had get fu­el for them. It’s a cost­ly thing be­cause we have to full diesel in our van at the same time...then look at the road con­di­tions.”

Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh said while sev­er­al at­tempts have been made to fix the now wors­en­ing land­slide, noth­ing has worked. He said it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the res­i­dents’ fears are re­alised.

“Se­ri­ous ques­tions we ask­ing from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and the Min­is­ter of Works, let them come and give res­i­dents the as­sur­ance that it is safe to tra­verse so when some­thing goes wrong or a fa­tal­i­ty should hap­pen, God for­bid, that we know the course of ac­tion to be tak­en against them.”

Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards Jr ex­plained that the nec­es­sary works on al­ter­na­tive routes in and out of the area will take place to en­sure res­i­dents aren’t cut off.

He added that weath­er con­di­tions and oth­er vari­ables de­layed works but the con­trac­tor tasked with ad­dress­ing the road­way at the site in Chatham is set to re­sume works.

“The lat­est de­vel­op­ment that I have is that WASA has com­plet­ed its en­gi­neer­ing de­sign and as­sess­ment and they are now about to re­sume in terms of work­ing with the con­trac­tor to move the line,” Richards said.

Richards not­ed that a num­ber of land­slips have been iden­ti­fied and works will com­mence based on the lev­el of threat posed.