Residents protest bad roads in Cunupia

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Fed up with the deplorable state of roads in their community, the residents of Mc Nair New Trace, Cunupia, staged a protest demonstration on Monday.

Latchman Maharaj, resident and spokesman, said the roads and drains are in such a deplorable state that the drains are just a few inches lower that the roadway.

“The road is going down into the drain and blocking the drains. Whenever the rains come we have flooding taking place.”

Maharaj said the roadway is important since it allows traffic to divert off the Southern Main Road from communities as far away as Longdenville to access Chin Chin Road, which connects to roads leading to the airport and the east bound lane of the Churchill Roosevelt Highway.

Jonathan George, another resident, says the road has been in that condition for quite some time now.

“The drainage has been pulling the road apart. The road wasn’t that wide. It has been pulling the road apart, and it’s very frustrating to be living on this road.”

Bhaljit “Bhajee” Bedassie said he uses the road twice a day to transport school children, and told Guardian Media that several motorists have suffered costly damage to their vehicles.

“You know how much time I see man vehicle bumper root out in the back here? It over bearing. We cyah take it again!”

Meanwhile, Balmattie Gosyne, the councillor for Las Lomas / San Rafael on the Couva-Tabaquite-Talparo Regional Corporation, said the CTTRC had not received any funds to fix the roadway — and several others in her electoral district — despite continuous appeals to government, over the last few years.

She told us her office has been bombarded with calls from hundreds of drivers irate over the road conditions.

“I have over 50-plus roads in my electoral area that are not being fixed,” the councillor reports. “We have not been getting funding to do any box drain. This would result in continuous flooding in these areas. We have not been getting our ravines and our rivers cleaned by ministry of works. We don’t have corporation funding to even hire backhoes or even excavators to clean our watercourses,” she said.

Balmattie Goysne said her area may just be the most neglected community in Central Trinidad, when it comes to funding and repairs to infrastructure.

Residents of Mc Nair New Trace say their properties and vehicles are being damaged because the road has not been fixed.

They are hoping their protest action forces the government into action.

Story and images by SHASTRI BOODAN