KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As heavy show­ers pound­ed South Oropouche over the last two days, life be­came a bit more ter­ri­fy­ing for res­i­dents of St John’s Branch Trace, Av­o­cat, Fyz­abad as a res­i­dent fell in­to the riv­er while try­ing to get a boat across the site of a fall­en bridge to his ail­ing wife, who re­quired med­ical care.

Sam­sun­dar Seep­er­sad, 69, squint­ed as he spoke to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, say­ing he could not see well af­ter spend­ing some sec­onds un­der the wa­ter that left mud in his eyes. Af­ter res­i­dents bod­i­ly took his wife, Leena, 61, to the boat, she even­tu­al­ly got across to see a pri­vate doc­tor for her heart con­di­tion.

“She suf­fered all day, all night. That was why we tried to see if the boat could have crossed. That was how I end­ed up falling in­to the riv­er with the boat, me and the next young gen­tle­man. I went un­der the wa­ter for a cou­ple of min­utes,” Seep­er­sad said.

Leena re­mains at a rel­a­tive’s home as her con­di­tion is se­vere. Seep­er­sad said she un­der­went triple by­pass surgery pre­vi­ous­ly.

As a farmer, it is dif­fi­cult for Sam­sun­dar to get his crops across. Yes­ter­day, Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (SBC) work­ers as­sist­ed him with this. Those work­ers be­gan paving a walk­way on the river­bank to as­sist res­i­dents in cross­ing. With caimans lurk­ing, res­i­dents use a boat at­tached to ropes tied to an old tree root on the road­side and a co­conut tree on the op­po­site bank to pull them­selves across.

Sam­sun­dar said that while the walk­way would help, it would col­lapse soon­er or lat­er as the rains con­tin­ued. He said the riv­er had not been cleaned for years, and the fall­en bridge would cause fur­ther block­age and pos­si­ble floods.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Seuk­er­an Prem­c­hand, said the walk­way would help as the bank was slip­pery and had caused sev­er­al res­i­dents to fall. He said their cur­rent means of cross­ing was not safe.

“The bank is break­ing down, so at any mo­ment, the tree can pull down with the ex­cess wa­ter when the gate opens, and the wa­ter starts to gush,” Prem­c­hand said.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said he con­tact­ed Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Pe­ter Mitchell yes­ter­day, who in­di­cat­ed that he was await­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. Mayrhoo said In the in­ter­im, he was try­ing to ac­cess dry goods to get to res­i­dents across the riv­er. He said both Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi knew the res­i­dents were fac­ing an emer­gency.

“Some­thing like this needs ur­gent at­ten­tion, and I am ap­peal­ing to both min­is­ters: let us do some­thing in the short­est pos­si­ble time to en­sure these peo­ple can have safe ac­cess to come out of their homes to ac­cess the ser­vices out­side,” Mayrhoo said.

Speak­ing to re­porters in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi could not say when the res­i­dents would have a new bridge. Asked if it could take weeks or months to sort out the mat­ters, he said, “I re­al­ly can­not say be­cause it may be faster than that; it may be longer than that. I do not know with­out the de­tails, and I do not want to be ir­re­spon­si­ble in giv­ing you in­for­ma­tion I have not ver­i­fied.”

He said the old bridge and the land res­i­dents lived on were not vest­ed un­der the SBC, and it would be il­le­gal from a pub­lic pro­cure­ment per­spec­tive for the Gov­ern­ment to spend on pri­vate prop­er­ty. Read­ing from an email from the SBC’s CEO, Ann Ho­sein, Al-Rawi said the bridge was un­named and not vest­ed in the SBC. It stat­ed that the SBC had nev­er un­der­tak­en work on the bridge and nev­er re­quest­ed fund­ing un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme. The SBC said it did not know who owned the land on the oth­er side of the bridge. Af­ter not­ing the col­lapse, Al-Rawi said he had re­quest­ed es­ti­mates and struc­tures.

Al Rawi said  that in the mean­time, au­thor­i­ties were look­ing at pri­vate and pub­lic arrange­ments to pro­vide re­lief. He said all process­es were in gear. With the fall­en bridge re­strict­ing the wa­ter flow, Al Rawi said, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was en­gaged in re­mov­ing it.