Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan are be­ing re­spec­tive­ly in­vit­ed by Na­pari­ma and Moru­ga res­i­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence the “plea­sure” of dri­ving over two roads which res­i­dents want to re­name in their ho­n­our the “Colm Im­bert Boule­vard” and the “Sinanan Dri­ve.”

The roads—Garth Road, Pi­paro and Jaipauls­ingh Road in Moru­ga— are said by coun­cil­lors of each area to be the first and sec­ond worst roads in T&T.

Na­pari­ma res­i­dents, who want to re­name Garth Road “The Colm Im­bert Boule­vard”, would like Im­bert to ex­pe­ri­ence the “plea­sure” of ne­go­ti­at­ing the road­way which has 250 pot­holes and over 50 land­slides along its three miles ac­cord­ing to Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles.

Charles spoke about the is­sue af­ter Im­bert’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day that “more mon­ey is spent to re­pair rur­al road­ways than ur­ban roads.”

Charles is chal­leng­ing Im­bert “To dri­ve his tax free, mil­lion dol­lar, lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle along Garth Road at 20 kph any day— on­ly then will he ful­ly un­der­stand the dai­ly frus­tra­tions which con­stituents face on what coun­cil­lor Vashti Sookoo de­scribes as the ‘worst road’ in the coun­try.”

“What he fails to ap­pre­ci­ate are the high­ly un­sta­ble ge­o­log­i­cal con­di­tions preva­lent through­out Na­pari­ma and oth­er south Trinidad ar­eas which re­quire spe­cial at­ten­tion.

The Pi­paro vol­cano, Dev­il’s Wood­yard and the thou­sands of land­slides speak to high­ly un­sta­ble soils.

“Garth Road is a three mile ob­sta­cle course with over 50 land­slides and 250 pot­holes. The great ge­o­graph­ic spread of rur­al con­stituen­cies, com­pared to com­pact road­ways in ur­ban ar­eas, de­mand much big­ger al­lo­ca­tions.”

Charles called on Sinanan to dri­ve along Jaipauls­ingh Road which Moru­ga coun­cil­lor Rafi Mo­hammed de­scribes as “the sec­ond worst road” in T&T.

“Jaipauls­ingh Road has hun­dreds of large pot­holes and con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to a pe­ti­tion for it to be re­named ‘Sinanan Dri­ve’,” Charles added

“It’s time Min­is­ters Im­bert and Sinanan come out of their air-con­di­tioned of­fices and ex­pe­ri­ence first-hand the frus­tra­tions of com­muters and the in­ad­e­qua­cy of the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with ter­ri­ble road con­di­tions.

The Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, re­spon­si­ble for over 700 sec­ondary roads and agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess traces, was al­lo­cat­ed a mere $4mil­lion in the 2019 bud­get. The THA, re­spon­si­ble for rough­ly one third the pop­u­la­tion, was al­lo­cat­ed $15 mil­lion”.