RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Even as the Min­istry of Works mo­bilised a con­trac­tor to fix a ma­jor land­slip at George Vil­lage, Table­land, wa­ter on Thurs­day con­tin­ued to gush from a leak­ing pipeline where a house and part of the road col­lapsed a few weeks ago.

Watch­ing the wa­ter shoot­ing out from the burst main was painful for Derek Ed­wards, who lost his home be­cause of the slip­page.

His is among 20 fam­i­lies who are home­less due to land­slips in the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­wards said it was dif­fi­cult to think about re­build­ing his home.

“Los­ing your home is like los­ing your life,” he said, as he watched the re­mains of his house at the bot­tom of the hill.

He said since his home crum­bled, he had been stay­ing at a cousin’s house.

“I went sev­er­al places for help, even went to Self Help, but no­body came or did any­thing,” he said.

His neigh­bour An­drew Valdez said it was sad to see how quick­ly the en­tire road went down.

“This wa­ter start­ed to leak three weeks ago and they nev­er fixed it. The road start­ed to cave away and now it is sin­gle-lane traf­fic,” he said.

He not­ed that the dust from the land­slip al­so pos­es a haz­ard.

“Every day is a traf­fic jam here be­cause the cars have to wait to clear this area. We hear that they com­ing to fix it but we want to know what will hap­pen to the peo­ple who lost their homes,” Valdez said.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said yes­ter­day that the min­istry does not pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of prop­er­ty.

“That area is prone to land­slips and we have sev­er­al projects on­go­ing in the Table­land/Moru­ga area,” Sinanan said.

He said the road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme is on­go­ing.

“For the last year, 81 in­fra­struc­tur­al projects have been con­tract­ed in rur­al ar­eas of Trinidad. Works have been com­plet­ed on forty of these projects and the re­main­ing 41 are ei­ther on­go­ing or are sched­uled to com­mence soon,” he said.

Out of 300 projects iden­ti­fied, Sinanan said for fis­cal 2021/2022, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 27 per cent of the road projects are in rur­al ar­eas and a to­tal of $237 mil­lion had been spent to fix roads and land­slips.

He added that the heavy rain­fall since June had ex­ac­er­bat­ed the slip­pages at George Vil­lage, Table­land, not­ing that the soil type was the main rea­son why the land has con­tin­ued to cave.

Sinanan said while he sym­pa­thised with the res­i­dents, it was up to the coun­cil­lors and the MPs to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion to ac­cess grants from the rel­e­vant State agen­cies.

Gen­er­al As­sis­tance, Food Sup­port, Self Help and Rental As­sis­tance grants are avail­able from the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry and the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help.

But MP for Mor­ga/Table­land Michelle Ben­jamin said these grants were in­suf­fi­cient and in­ac­ces­si­ble to many peo­ple who have lost their homes to fires, land­slips and oth­er dis­as­ters.

She said 20 fam­i­lies have al­ready lost their homes due to land­slips in the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy.

Al­though rep­re­sen­ta­tion is made, Ben­jamin said most of these fam­i­lies have not been able to ac­cess any grant or fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the State. She said spe­cial as­sis­tance should be giv­en to fam­i­lies through the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.