Tuesday’s heavy rainfall has weakened a landslip residents of Upper Moraldo Street in Maraval have been living with for many years.
Debris continues to slide off the hill and is now threatening several homes in the community.
Truda Charles, a resident of the area, said after 40 years of hard work in the hotel industry she was hoping to sit back and enjoy the home she built for her and her family. Instead, Truda and her granddaughter are staying with a relative.
“We reach a situation now we have to get assistance because someone will die,” Charles said.
She added, “If rain fall today or tomorrow the whole bank coming down on my house”.
Currently, Truda’s backyard is covered with soil and rocks from the hill which is just outside her granddaughter’s bedroom window.
“Well, I am staying by my daughter so I’ll stay by her and come up during the day and as I show you all, I will do whatever little then,” Truda said.
Another resident told Guardian Media his 57-year-old mother’s home is also at risk. Part of her property has already begun to crack.
“I don’t live there but it hard to see my mother and father work so hard to build a little house, to grow we up, as poor people for their house to go down a bank now,” according to Peter Penny.
There is another problem the residents of Upper Moraldo Street are experiencing.
While there is plenty of water coming from the sky, there is none coming through their taps.
“Look at the kind of water the people have to be drinking now, after rain fall. You could see it have stone and bacteria in the water,” another resident lamented.
The resident said WASA installed pipes in the area over five years ago after they took their complaint to their Member of Parliament, Colm Imbert.
To this day, the resident said families have to trek up the hill every day to get water from a well because there is no connection.
“You run the pipeline down in the road. You tell me personally that you have to get a piece of land down on the main road to put a pumping station and up to now it can’t materialize. Everybody have to be fighting for water,” he said.
What is worse the residents said is that they are forced to stare at their MP’s office from on top of the hill where they are forced to fill their buckets with water, remembering the many promises he made to look into their complaints.
Guardian Media reached out to MP Imbert via calls and a text to his phone. Up to press time, we did not receive a response.
However, the Diego Martin Regional Corporation confirmed that it has received an official report from the residents and a crew will be sent to assess the area today.
