Shas­tri Boodan

Dis­grun­tled res­i­dents of Wel­come Road North and Wel­come Road South, Cunu­pia, burned tyres in protest yes­ter­day to high­light, what they called, the wors­en­ing con­di­tions of roads in the Cen­tral com­mu­ni­ty.

A spokesman for the res­i­dents, Mar­lon Romero, claimed there are nu­mer­ous pot­holes in the road­way, cost­ing dri­vers thou­sands of dol­lars to re­pair the sus­pen­sion in their ve­hi­cles.

Romero claimed it was on­ly last month he spent $9,500 to do re­pair work on his ve­hi­cle.

The protest by res­i­dents be­gan around 5 am and con­tin­ued un­til the po­lice and fire ser­vices ar­rived. The po­lice re­mained in the area un­til 9 am forc­ing the pro­test­ers to leave.

Romero claimed the road prob­lems wors­ened af­ter the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty un­der­took works in the area.

Romero said res­i­dents protest­ed twice be­fore, but this was the first time they burned tyres.

Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) and coun­cil­lor for the area, Ryan Ram­per­sad said he con­tact­ed WASA.

He said the au­thor­i­ty promised to have Wel­come Road North and Wel­come Road South re­paired soon.

Ram­per­sad said the road was one of five pre­sent­ed to the Sec­ondary Roads Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SR­RIC) af­ter it was in­cor­po­rat­ed on June 17, 2022.

“It was scoped and es­ti­mat­ed to go out to be ten­dered, how­ev­er, the SR­RIC was shut down two years af­ter it was es­tab­lished. With the clo­sure of the SR­RIC in June , we (re­fer­ring to the CT­TRC) put it back to the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, so it may be at the scop­ing stage,” he ex­plained.

He said be­cause of the sig­nif­i­cant work re­quired for the road, he hoped the Works Min­istry’s PURE would take over the task.