Shal­iza Has­sanali

In the last sev­en years, Ram­chan­dra “Zam­bie” Teemal has re­paired more than 100 pot­holes with­in the Aranguez com­mu­ni­ty in a bid to ease the frus­tra­tion of mo­torists and taxi dri­vers

From 2015 to now, Teemal, 61, has giv­en more than 200 hours of his labour to patch roads that have been filled with holes, craters and sinks us­ing ma­te­ri­als do­nat­ed by two hard­ware com­pa­nies.

Due to his swift in­ter­ven­tion, Teemal is be­ing hailed by mo­torists, taxi dri­vers, friends, res­i­dents and fam­i­ly mem­bers of his Sookai Street, Aranguez home as the com­mu­ni­ty’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that more than $20,000 has been spent on con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als to have some de­plorable roads im­proved in the bustling dis­trict, while Teemal’s labour has been val­ued at over $30,000.

He said this was a small price to pay com­pared to the thou­sands of dol­lars mo­torists have to fork out reg­u­lar­ly to re­place bust­ed tyres, dam­aged sus­pen­sion and dished rims due to the poor state of the na­tion’s roads.

“Not for­get­ting the in­con­ve­nience and the frus­tra­tion it caus­es. To the taxi dri­vers, the route be­came more of an ob­sta­cle course,” Teemal said.

Teemal, the pres­i­dent of the Aranguez Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing 60 dri­vers, told the Sun­day Guardian that he took on the task of sin­gle-hand­ed­ly patch­ing the roads af­ter nu­mer­ous com­plaints to the au­thor­i­ties fell on deaf ears and pho­tographs post­ed on his Face­book page that showed the ter­ri­ble con­di­tion of the roads were ig­nored.

“I  de­cid­ed to re­pair the roads to bring some re­lief to mo­torists and taxi dri­vers who spent hours ma­noeu­vring these holes and craters in Aranguez to get from one point to the next. The sit­u­a­tion was just get­ting out of hand.”

De­scrib­ing him­self as a pa­tri­ot, Teemal said he did not patch the roads for fame and glo­ry but his “love for coun­try and com­mu­ni­ty”.

Us­ing his ini­tia­tive, Teemal struck up a deal with two San Juan busi­ness­es—Tool Time Hard­ware and Aranguez Hard­ware—to sup­ply the grav­el and ce­ment, while he pro­vides labour.

De­spite hav­ing no paving skills, Teemal said he used his com­mon sense to get the job done.

“I com­pact­ed the pot­holes with crushed bricks, stones or grav­el and cov­ered the sur­face with a mix­ture of grav­el and ce­ment.”

De­pend­ing on the depth, length and width of the crater, Teemal would use be­tween two and three bags of ce­ment and a yard of grav­el.

If a job is too large for Teemal to han­dle, oth­er taxi dri­vers would lend a help­ing hand.

Teemal ad­mit­ted that while some of the projects he un­der­took have re­mained in­tact, the weight of the larg­er trucks on the roads has led to cracks ap­pear­ing on the con­crete paved ar­eas.