Scrap iron thieves are not steal­ing parts of a re­tain­ing wall in cen­tral Trinidad. In­stead, it is the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT).

Com­muters us­ing the Ca­paro Val­ley Bras­so Road in the vicin­i­ty of the Mamoral Cross­ing raised con­cerns when they saw part of a met­al re­tain­ing wall miss­ing.

The struc­ture was erect­ed fol­low­ing a ma­jor land­slide in No­vem­ber 2022 that caused the road to be­come im­pass­able.

Hen­ry Awong, the Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said when the dis­as­ter ini­tial­ly struck mo­torists had to use an al­ter­nate route through Gran Cou­va. Awong said part of the half inch steel sheet used to build the wall and parts of the steel beam it was at­tached to was re­cent­ly re­moved by cut­ting it straight down to the lev­el of the road. Awong said he was in­quir­ing if the steel was be­ing re­moved by the MOWT for some rea­son.

Awong said the CT­TRC was not giv­en any no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the MOWT and sev­er­al com­muters ex­pressed their con­cerns to him since they feared the road may col­lapse again if heavy rains come in 2023 should more parts of the re­tain­ing wall go miss­ing. Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed an en­gi­neer with the MOWT who said the Min­istry re­moved part of the re­tain­ing wall to­wards the north­ern end of the road­way to al­low the landown­er ac­cess.

The en­gi­neer said the landown­er showed up with a cadas­tral that in­di­cat­ed there was a road re­serve in that area and an open­ing was made to al­low the landown­er to con­struct a bridge. The en­gi­neer as­sured that no ad­di­tion­al parts of the re­tain­ing wall would be re­moved. He said the in­tegri­ty of the struc­ture was not com­pro­mised. The en­gi­neer said the steel wall was on­ly tem­po­rary and a con­crete struc­ture would even­tu­al­ly be con­struct­ed to keep the road from col­laps­ing.