The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite is again call­ing on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to make good on its promis­es to re­pair di­lap­i­dat­ed road in­fra­struc­ture and dan­ger­ous land­slips in her con­stituen­cy.

The re­newed call comes as dis­traught res­i­dents of Gran Cou­va staged an ear­ly morn­ing protest to­day, us­ing wood­en pal­lets to block Cameron Road—the on­ly ac­cess to Ca­paro Val­ley Bras­so Main Road.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the Tabaquite MP said since 2020, the Min­istry was made aware of the se­ri­ous state of ma­jor roads in the con­stituen­cy, but lit­tle has been done since then.

“One of the first in­fra­struc­ture tours I em­barked on with the MOWT and Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) was a re­view of ma­jor land­slips lo­cat­ed in Gran Cou­va. That was in 2020. While some restora­tion work was at­tempt­ed, se­vere weath­er in No­vem­ber 2022 wreaked fur­ther dam­age to roads through­out the com­mu­ni­ty, wors­en­ing ex­ist­ing land­slips and re­sult­ing in new­ly formed land move­ments. My of­fice was in­formed that a ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey was be­ing con­duct­ed to in­form the re­quired re­pairs. To date, there has been no up­date and mul­ti­ple ar­eas along the Gran Cou­va Main Road re­main ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous for ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic with por­tions en­tire­ly closed,” she stat­ed.

MP Haynes-Al­leyne con­tin­ued, “In 2021, 10% of all land­slip re­pair projects iden­ti­fied by the MOWT were in Tabaquite. Since then, we’ve seen more land­slips de­vel­op. I have raised the need for ur­gent land­slip re­pairs through­out the con­stituen­cy of Tabaquite many times in the me­dia and in the Par­lia­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the Na­tion­al Bud­get de­bates. Prop­er restora­tion works are long over­due in Gran Cou­va and many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties such as Bras­so Ve­na­do, Los Ata­jos, Caratal, Coros­al, Guaracara, Par­force, Tor­tu­ga, Mamoral, San Fa­bi­en and more.”

The Tabaquite MP is urg­ing the Min­istry to ad­dress the bad roads and land­slips as soon as pos­si­ble, and to give an in­di­ca­tion as to when re­pair works will be un­der­tak­en.

“The men­tal and emo­tion­al weight of reg­u­lar­ly tra­vers­ing along un­safe roads must al­so be con­sid­ered,” she said. “These road haz­ards lim­it con­nec­tiv­i­ty as well as ac­cess to crit­i­cal ser­vices such as garbage col­lec­tion, postal de­liv­ery, emer­gency health re­spons­es and more. There is al­so an in­cred­i­ble fi­nan­cial bur­den as ve­hi­cles are en­dur­ing ex­treme wear, tear and dam­age. Homes are at risk as walls crack and foun­da­tions shift. Com­muters of­ten miss work and school es­pe­cial­ly when road con­di­tions wors­en in the rain.”

MP Haynes-Al­leyne main­tains that peo­ple should not have re­sort to protest ac­tion in or­der for Gov­ern­ment to act.

“Cit­i­zens are des­per­ate for ba­sic ser­vices—wa­ter in their taps, safe road­ways, prop­er schools for their chil­dren. In the ab­sence of ba­sic com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion from gov­ern­ment agen­cies, cit­i­zens are pushed to­wards mak­ing a spec­ta­cle in the me­dia. This can­not be an ac­cept­able form of gov­er­nance,” she said.