RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

More than ten house­holds are now cut off be­cause of two land­slips which de­vel­oped along the Old Rio Claro/Ma­yaro Road, leav­ing res­i­dents and farm­ers in dis­tress.

Since the land caved in two weeks ago, farm­ers have been walk­ing to their fields and us­ing wheel­bar­rows to bring out their pro­duce.

Over 11 acres of agri­cul­tur­al lands are now in­ac­ces­si­ble and farm­ers say they face the heartache of watch­ing their crops rot in the fields.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, farmer An­tho­ny Moore said he had to make four trips in and out of his fields to get a sup­ply of plan­tains for a cus­tomer.

“It was stress walk­ing up and down. For every trip, I had to walk with the bar­row, load it and bring it out. It took me al­most two hours to get the pro­duce out. We are frus­trat­ed and we want the Gov­ern­ment to step in and as­sist us,” Moore said.

At the cen­tre of one land­slip, a tele­phone pole stood tilt­ed, its lines reach­ing al­most to the ground.

Res­i­dents said it was a haz­ard for those tra­vers­ing the road.

With no ve­hic­u­lar ac­cess, the res­i­dents who live in the mid­dle of the two land­slips have to walk in and out of Ameena Moore Road to get out of the vil­lage.

“My nephew Ju­nior Gor­don is build­ing his house and now every­thing is com­plete­ly cut off. His house is par­tial­ly built and he can­not fin­ish it,” Moore said.

He added that his son Samuel Moore al­so start­ed the foun­da­tion work for his home but since the col­lapse of the road­way, that en­tire project has stalled.

“I re­cent­ly bought a prop­er­ty on the oth­er side of the road. The val­ue of the land de­pre­ci­at­ed and my sis­ter Pamela Gor­don has a house worth over $2 mil­lion. The en­tire back of it is gone,” Moore ex­plained.

Asked what was caus­ing the road to slip, Moore ex­plained that a WASA line rup­tured two years ago and be­gan un­der­min­ing the road.

Last week, WASA vis­it­ed and ran a flex­i­ble line through the com­mu­ni­ty in the area of the land­slip, but Moore said there is still leak­age in oth­er parts of the old wa­ter­line.

Moore said res­i­dents were hop­ing to get six 12-inch cylin­ders so they could cre­ate tem­po­rary ac­cess.

Mean­while, MP for Ma­yaro Rush­ton Paray said the Ma­yaro-Guaya Road is al­so in a dis­as­trous state.

“I have writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan. While the en­tire coun­try is plagued with ter­ri­ble roads, the artery be­tween these two south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ties stands out for its ex­treme­ly ru­inous state,” Paray said.

He added: “Pot­holes and de­pres­sions are gi­ant-sized, to the point where com­mer­cial de­liv­er­ies could cease, thus af­fect­ing re­tail op­er­a­tions in the af­fect­ed dis­tricts. Taxi dri­vers are threat­en­ing to in­crease their fares be­cause of the high cost of main­te­nance of their ve­hi­cles.”

Say­ing this would put ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on res­i­dents, Paray said the ter­ri­ble road con­di­tion would al­so de­ter emer­gency ve­hi­cles. He said he has since re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with Min­is­ter Sinanan.

Re­cent­ly, fol­low­ing a spate of protests, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said a Sec­ondary Road and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny will be set up to ad­dress de­plorable roads. He said $100 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the com­pa­ny, which will fall un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment.