Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Mon­day's protests in San Fran­cique yes­ter­day spread to Mur­ray Trace in Siparia as an­gry vil­lagers blocked the roads to high­light lack of wa­ter, poor drainage and pot-holed roads.

The protests stopped quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions in the area as they put de­bris on the street and set it afire. They called on Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to in­ves­ti­gate the quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions as trucks were us­ing the roads il­le­gal­ly. One res­i­dent, De­vi­ka De­onar­ine said Mur­ray Trace was not de­signed for ve­hi­cles weigh­ing more than three tonnes. A sign post­ed by the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in­di­cat­ed that ve­hi­cles weigh­ing more than three tonnes were not al­lowed on the road.

De­onar­ine said with­in re­cent times, a con­trac­tor in the area start­ed quar­ry­ing and ten-tonne trucks start­ed haul­ing ma­te­r­i­al from the quar­ry,

"The road start­ed to sink and now it is im­pass­able," De­onar­ine said. She ex­plained that the road­side drains had be­come clogged, caus­ing ex­ces­sive flood­ing. Pres­i­dent of the Mur­ray Trace Shiv Shak­ti Mandir Vish­nudath Ma­haraj said Hin­du mur­tis were sup­posed to be brought in­to the area next week, but be­cause of the poor state of the roads, it will be im­pos­si­ble for res­i­dents to walk with the mur­tis to the tem­ple.

"We have old peo­ple here who can­not walk be­cause of the state of the road," Ma­haraj said. An­oth­er res­i­dent Prem Ramkhelawan said sev­er­al re­ports were made to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion about the state of the roads, but noth­ing has been done. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the cor­po­ra­tion Lau­rence Oliv­er said yes­ter­day he was not au­tho­rised to speak about gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Chair­man of the Cor­po­ra­tion Vidya De­ok­iesingh said a meet­ing was held with res­i­dents and Coun­cil­lor Ivan Sin­clair in a bid to re­solve the prob­lem.