Sascha Wil­son

“Just promis­es and promis­es,” lament­ed el­der­ly res­i­dent Mo­han Ramdeen, as he vent­ed his frus­tra­tion yes­ter­day over two land­slips in his neigh­bour­hood.

Ramdeen’s house is lo­cat­ed be­tween the two land­slips along Ba­boolal Trace, Iere Vil­lage Branch Road in Princes Town.

The sec­ond land­slip is the worst of the two and since Jan­u­ary to date, it has de­voured more half of the road.

Due to the de­plorable state of the road, Ramdeen com­plained that garbage trucks can no longer ser­vice the area.

“Garbage truck stop com­ing in­side here. We don’t have a place to put our garbage. We in re­al prob­lem now to put our garbage,” he said.

Ramdeen was al­so con­cerned that in case of an emer­gency, an am­bu­lance will al­so have dif­fi­cul­ty ac­cess­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

“They might be able to come a cer­tain part. If some­thing hap­pen low­er down the road, they mightn’t be able to go.”

A res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty for al­most 40 years, Ramdeen said they al­ways had is­sues with the road.

“The vil­lagers put up mon­ey and fix the road our­selves. Some­times the cor­po­ra­tion come, some­times we ask for help, we don’t get the help,” he said.

He said one of the res­i­dents liv­ing fur­ther down from the sec­ond land­slip parks her car in front of his home and walks to her home. He said re­cent­ly, the cor­po­ra­tion “throw some ma­te­r­i­al” on the land­slip but noth­ing fur­ther was done.

Res­i­dent Pre­am Badree, who has to pass the sec­ond land­slip every day to get to and from his home, said a few days ago WASA re­paired a leak. But he is con­cerned that soon the en­tire road will col­lapse.

Lament­ing that about ten house­holds are af­fect­ed, he said res­i­dents are al­so forced to dip in­to their pock­ets to con­stant­ly re­pair their ve­hi­cles. Com­plain­ing that his fa­ther’s ve­hi­cle has been un­der re­pairs for al­most a month, Badree, a sales­man, said he now has to trav­el by taxi to work and it costs him about $64 to and from work each day.

Since they no longer have a garbage col­lec­tion ser­vice, Badree said they have to re­sort to ei­ther ask­ing oth­er res­i­dents to al­low them to put their garbage in their bins or burn their garbage.

Ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion when it rains, he said, “There is a lot of wa­ter that ac­tu­al­ly flows, the dirt is soft and you have to take ex­tra pre­cau­tion if you have to pass with a car be­cause you have to creep up on an­oth­er per­son prop­er­ty. If not, is best you get an um­brel­la and leave or stay in your house.”

Com­plain­ing that two hous­es were de­stroyed due to an­oth­er land­slip sev­er­al years ago, al­most in the same area of the sec­ond land­slip, he said it was sub­se­quent­ly re­paired and a re­tain­ing wall con­struct­ed.

“We are ask­ing for a wall to be ex­tend­ed from the cur­rent one to be built ap­pro­pri­ate­ly around the lines, the road to be re­paired so that we could get the garbage truck ser­vices and for our cars to freely pass with no fear of any dam­age,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine said a crew is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the area this week to do fur­ther works on the land­slip.