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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Trees used to block road during protest

by

Sascha Wilson
2413 days ago
20181126

Two vil­lages in Flana­gin Town in Cen­tral Trinidad were cut off af­ter res­i­dents felled trees and blocked the road dur­ing a protest over bad roads on Monday.

The vil­lages were left with­out elec­tric­i­ty as the falling trees ripped down pow­er lines.

T&TEC crews re­spond­ed to iso­late live wires to pre­vent a po­ten­tial tragedy in the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty known for its tow­er­ing teak trees at the side of the road.

School chil­dren and peo­ple head­ing to work were un­able to get out while school meals pre­pared for pri­ma­ry and preschools could not reach the chil­dren in time.

Res­i­dents of Los Ata­jos and Bras­so Ve­na­do said the de­plorable con­di­tion of the roads was not on­ly dan­ger­ous, but it is al­so dam­ag­ing their ve­hi­cles.

Dri­ver Kr­ish­na Sood­een who works with the lunch cen­tre in the area which pro­vides lunch­es for 14 schools in the Cen­tral Trinidad area, said they were un­able to de­liv­er 780 break­fast meals and 1,080 lunch­es were de­layed.

Com­plain­ing about the sev­er­al land­slips, pot­holes and de­pres­sions in the road, he said, “We know they are say­ing the Gov­ern­ment don’t have the mon­ey right now but if the Gov­ern­ment could at least help us to full up some of these holes where they will be pass­able for ve­hi­cles.”

She re­called that an am­bu­lance which was tak­ing her 90-year-old moth­er to the hos­pi­tal ran off the road.

“We had to winch out the ve­hi­cles so we could take her to get med­ical at­ten­tion.”

The dri­ver ap­pealed to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan for help.

“This road is a very im­por­tant road for the res­i­dents of Bras­so Ve­na­do and Los Ata­jos. It is some­thing we des­per­ate­ly need and we des­per­ate­ly ask­ing the min­is­ter in charge to do some­thing for us please.”

Coun­cil­lor Hen­ry Awong com­mend­ed the res­i­dents for their ac­tions. “Ap­par­ent­ly this is need­ed to get the ears and at­ten­tion of those in au­thor­i­ty, name­ly the Min­is­ter of Works, be­cause this road, in par­tic­u­lar, falls un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Works High­ways Di­vi­sion.”

He said nu­mer­ous com­plaints to the min­istry’s Bras­so Dis­trict of­fice but they have been met with “one sto­ry, that they don’t have ma­te­r­i­al, they don’t have the equip­ment, their man­pow­er is de­plet­ed, they have no fund­ing.”

He said over 300 res­i­dents, a school and even teach­ers who live out of the area are be­ing af­fect­ed by the road con­di­tion.

He said taxi and maxi taxis refuse to work in the area and the fire ten­ders may not be able to pass or reach in a time­ly man­ner in the event of a fire in the area. Oth­er ar­eas along the Bras­so Tamana Road and Tele­maque Road were blocked with trees, but they were re­moved by a crew su­per­vised by T&TEC and the po­lice.

Res­i­dents, how­ev­er, promised to in­ten­si­fy their protest ac­tion if their plight is ig­nored.


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