John: Govt can’t commit $20M for Piparo road repairs yet as ground continues to shift

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

While work con­tin­ues on dam­aged road­ways in Pi­paro, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says a com­plete restora­tion can­not be done at this time due to on­go­ing ground move­ment in the area.

John, ac­com­pa­nied by her team, did a pre-dawn site vis­it yes­ter­day to as­sess the work that had been done at Robert­son Hill and oth­er ar­eas.

The road­way was se­vere­ly af­fect­ed fol­low­ing height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty at the Pi­paro Mud Vol­cano on Christ­mas Eve, be­com­ing im­pass­able and cut­ting off ac­cess for res­i­dents.

The min­is­ter, who al­so vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty on Christ­mas Day, said crews car­ried out ex­ten­sive works, al­low­ing res­i­dents on both sides of the dam­aged sec­tion at Robert­son Hill to re­con­nect to the Guayagua­yare-Tabaquite Road via Hou­saine Trace and Pi­paro Road.

Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works are al­so be­ing done on the ac­cess road to en­sure a “smoother” tran­si­tion in case of an evac­u­a­tion.

De­spite the res­i­dents’ re­quest for full re­con­struc­tion of the road­way, John said this can­not be un­der­tak­en at this time due to safe­ty con­cerns and the sig­nif­i­cant en­gi­neer­ing costs in­volved.

“Al­though res­i­dents are ask­ing for the com­plete restora­tion, we can’t change it be­cause of just look­ing at this (land­slip). This drop, as it is here, would be about $20 mil­lion. It might look small, but it’s sig­nif­i­cant en­gi­neer­ing that will have to go on. We can­not com­mit to that kind of mon­ey un­til we know what is hap­pen­ing. So, we are re­al­ly try­ing, and we use a lot of in-house re­sources to re­store,” she said.

John said the min­istry may have to do pro­cure­ment for a Bai­ley bridge, but, in the in­ter­im, it has done some main­te­nance work and erect­ed cau­tion signs.

The min­is­ter al­so as­sured that if the sit­u­a­tion be­comes so dan­ger­ous that re­lo­ca­tion is re­quired, the Gov­ern­ment will take the nec­es­sary mea­sures.

John said on­ly one res­i­dent raised the is­sue of re­lo­ca­tion, but her im­pres­sion was that no one re­al­ly want­ed to leave their homes.

In the mean­time, on­ly lo­cal traf­fic was be­ing en­cour­aged in the area, and the mud vol­cano re­mained cor­doned off, as it was still ac­tive yes­ter­day.

Sybil Badal, 63, a Robert­son Hill res­i­dent,who lived there all her life, said it was not as scary as the 1997 ma­jor erup­tion, but they were sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­con­ve­nienced by the lim­it­ed ac­cess to the road.

She said it would be worse when school re­opens next week. She said the land move­ment caused cracks in her yard, and some ar­eas sank and lift­ed, while her shed par­tial­ly col­lapsed.

“For the first one, I got fright­ened, but now it’s not that se­vere. So my main con­cern is the road for we to just come in and go out.”

If it be­comes nec­es­sary for them to be re­lo­cat­ed, she said they would, but for now she wants to “wait and see”.

How­ev­er, her son, who lives with her, along with his wife and two chil­dren, is lean­ing to­wards re­lo­ca­tion.

Al­so tour­ing with the min­is­ter were Princes Town MP Aiy­na Ali, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine, and Cou­va-Tabaquite Tal­paro Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad, along with oth­er of­fi­cials.