KEVON FELMINE

Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In re­sponse to res­i­dents of Bar­rack­pore, who threat­ened to keep up protests un­til work be­gins on build­ing a new road, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said they are free to do what they like with­in the law.

He said so af­ter res­i­dents staged a fiery ear­ly morn­ing protest yes­ter­day. They placed old tyres, tree branch­es and oth­er items across Rees Road, GP Road and St Croix Road and set fire to them be­fore sun­rise. How­ev­er, po­lice re­spond­ed quick­ly and two van loads of of­fi­cers armed with hel­mets and ma­chine guns pre­vent­ed res­i­dents from reignit­ing the de­bris while fire­fight­ers ex­tin­guished the fires.

Sinanan said when Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) em­ploy­ees went to the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day morn­ing to be­gin patch­ing the road, res­i­dents chased them away.

“Res­i­dents threw stones at them say­ing they do not want it patched but paved. They will make at­tempts again to patch the road. Es­ti­mates are al­ready in and we are in the pro­cure­ment phase. We will patch the road to en­sure the sur­face im­proves as we await the ma­jor work which is on a sched­ule of work. Road paving is go­ing on around the coun­try. We can­not do it every­where at the same time,” he said.

The min­is­ter added that the protest will not change the fact that there is a process to fol­low with road re­pairs, in­clud­ing ten­der­ing.

The res­i­dents said they were told work would be­gin on June 12 and they al­lowed for ad­di­tion­al time ow­ing to the weath­er. How­ev­er, they ex­pect­ed to see the work be­gin this morn­ing.

One of the protest­ing res­i­dents, Naz Mo­hammed, said for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams was still alive the last time Rees Road was re­paired.

“Rees Road is the worst road in Trinidad and To­ba­go. You have oil re­sources com­ing out of this com­mu­ni­ty on a dai­ly ba­sis. All we ask for is a lit­tle piece of the pie back,”  he said.

“I un­der­stand that some Min­istry of Works peo­ple are com­ing to do some work or drop some ma­te­r­i­al on the road and we are say­ing no. The protest will stop when we see a bar­ber green ma­chine. That is the on­ly time. The time for the yel­low boul­ders has gone.”

Shop own­er Anil Ma­hadeo said busi­ness has been slow be­cause cus­tomers find it dif­fi­cult to dri­ve along Rees Road. He said the road has been in un­sat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion for too long and the peo­ple of Bar­rack­pore are cit­i­zens who de­serve prop­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

Yes­ter­day’s protest took place near the home of Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions pipe fit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon, who died on Sun­day af­ter suf­fer­ing burns in a fire at the Ni­Quan En­er­gy, Pointe-a-Pierre. A res­i­dent said he does not know where the hearse will pass to get to Ramkissoon’s home for the fu­ner­al.

“By the time that hearse reach­es from that junc­tion to here, my time might pass. They might have to go back with that body, so we want some­thing done. We are ask­ing in a very peace­ful man­ner,” said the res­i­dent, who did not give his name.