RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says land­slip re­pairs have been ramped up with three sep­a­rate units work­ing to re­pair slip­pages and di­lap­i­dat­ed roads.

Among the roads ear­marked for re­pairs is the 14-mile mark Pe­nal Rock Road which has ten land­slips. The road is lo­cat­ed in the con­stituen­cy of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and over the past few months res­i­dents have staged nu­mer­ous protests ask­ing the gov­ern­ment to fix the prob­lem.

As he toured a land­slip re­pair site at Bonne Aven­ture, Gas­par­il­lo, yes­ter­day Sinanan said the Min­istry has ramped up its land­slip re­pair pro­grammes and ten­ders have gone out to fix three land­slips along the Pe­nal Rock Road.

“We have ma­jor land­slips in the west and we are al­so do­ing road paving at Pic­ton Road, Laven­tille. Here we are do­ing sheet pil­ing,” he said re­fer­ring to the re­pairs at Gas­par­il­lo.

“Last year we had a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of land­slips be­cause of the rain. Land­slips can­not be re­paired just like that. We have to do soil test­ing, bore­holes, and de­signs. We are see­ing a new sys­tem be­ing used where we are us­ing more sheet piles.”

He said an oil com­pa­ny do­nat­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of sheet piles and pipes to the Works Min­istry.

“This is go­ing to help us ad­dress the land­slips. We have three units do­ing land­slips now. The PURE (Pro­gramme Up­grade for Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy) has ramped up its land­slip pro­gramme, the BLT (Bridges, Land­slip and Traf­fic Man­age­ment) they do the big land­slips, and we have the High­way Di­vi­sion start­ing a lot of land­slips,” he ex­plained.

Once land­slips are re­paired, Sinanan said road paving will start.

“We had promised from the start of the dry sea­son there will be an im­prove­ment in the road net­work,” he added.

Sinanan said there is now more fund­ing for road paving.

Since last year land­slips have been de­vel­op­ing at an un­prece­dent­ed rate. Last Au­gust, Skin­ner Trace in Siparia be­gan col­laps­ing, de­stroy­ing a house and top­pling elec­tri­cal lines.

In Lengua, St Croix and St Julien more than 25 hous­es have col­lapsed with­in five years, dis­plac­ing dozens of peo­ple. In var­i­ous parts of Clax­ton Bay, in­clud­ing Hill­top Road, Macaulay Road and Belle View, more than 15 hous­es have col­lapsed and fam­i­lies have been forced to live with­out ba­sic ameni­ties like garbage dis­pos­al and pipe-borne wa­ter.

In the south­west­ern penin­su­lar, the South­ern Main Road has caved in mul­ti­ple places, while in east Trinidad, Guayagua­yare Road, Man­zanil­la Main Road, and Rio Claro/Guayagua­yare Road have all been un­der­mined by slip­pages. In Pe­nal along Scotts Road, Rivero Trace, Rock Road, Good­man Trace and Sam­my Trace, quar­ry­ing and ad-hoc de­vel­op­ment have been blamed for mak­ing the soil vul­ner­a­ble to ero­sion. How­ev­er, ex­perts have said ex­ten­sive rain­fall trig­gered slip­pages.