KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Lopinot res­i­dents are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to fix their roads. They said they were cut off from the rest of the coun­try due to a road in­ci­dent on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to some res­i­dents, scores of peo­ple, among them teach­ers of schools, vis­i­tors and vil­lagers, were left strand­ed for over sev­en hours on Mon­day af­ter a trail­er, trans­port­ing a back­hoe, got stuck while at­tempt­ing to turn a cor­ner, mak­ing it im­pass­able for any­one in a ve­hi­cle to en­ter or ex­it the area.

The trail­er, be­long­ing to a con­tract­ing com­pa­ny, was trans­port­ing a back­hoe to be used on a bridge cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion a few miles up. The back wheels re­port­ed­ly slid off the road.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one res­i­dent, Gill Sali­na, said the in­ci­dent took place af­ter 2 pm but the road was not cleared un­til af­ter 9 pm forc­ing some peo­ple to find al­ter­na­tive places to stay or for those will­ing to take the risk, park their ve­hi­cle along the road and walk for miles un­til they get home.

But ac­cord­ing to Sali­na, is­sues with the roads in his com­mu­ni­ty are not new.

He said, “Rain start­ed to fall and a lot of hun­gry and tired peo­ple com­ing from work all day and thing. They nev­er cleared it un­til half past nine in the night from since ear­ly in the evening when chil­dren were com­ing home from school and fam­i­ly from work and thing so the peo­ple go through a re­al hard time with this here yes­ter­day. I was in it too.”

“The road too nar­row. It needs a wider bridge there. On the whole in Lopinot, there are a few places in the cor­ners and them that need cut­ting and the roads very bad too. It does have ac­ci­dents and thing. The road re­al­ly needs fix­ing bad and the cor­ners is one of the main things that need cut­ting in Lopinot and the bridges and them need fix­ing,” he added

He said an am­bu­lance was al­so un­able to reach an el­der­ly res­i­dent so rel­a­tives had to phys­i­cal­ly car­ry the per­son down the hill to meet the am­bu­lance be­cause of the road block on Mon­day.

Oth­er res­i­dents claimed is­sues in the area such as bad roads have been long ig­nored.

Al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lopinot Vil­lage Coun­cil pres­i­dent Athana­sius Gue­vara said, “The road in a state for years now. The last time this road fix was un­der Mr Pan­day. That was back in the 1990s. Since that, Lopinot like a for­got­ten place. Like we don’t re­al­ly ex­ist.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia spoke to Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, he con­firmed that road­works are on­go­ing.

And when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the bridge where the trail­er was head­ing to on Mon­day, works were be­ing done.

The work­ers al­so had po­lice es­cort as they said they were be­ing threat­ened by res­i­dents who did not ap­prove of the way in which the bridge was be­ing con­struct­ed.

But road­works is not the on­ly is­sue plagu­ing the Lopinot com­mu­ni­ty, as oth­er res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia be­cause of sat­u­rat­ed land, falling trees are al­so com­mon in the area.

On Mon­day, a tree fell on the light poll in Sur­rey Vil­lage, less than a mile from where the trail­er got stuck. No one was in­jured but it did cause a pow­er out­age in the area.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin, he said when he vis­it­ed the area late yes­ter­day, trees and de­bris were be­ing cleared.