Road works in Triumph have caused discomfort for residents of the East Coast Demerara village and damage to telephone cables and the contractor who was hired by the Regional Democratic Council of Region Four says he won’t be reimbursing the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T).
“There was no marker identifying it… Any road, they would normally put a marker. They ain’t had no post there either where wires running… I am not paying for it because they weren’t buried at three feet, they have to bury their thing more deep,” Marlon Lall of Noreen Lall Contracting told Stabroek News on Tuesday.
The phone company has repeatedly warned contractors in the past to contact it when road works are being undertaken.
Donald Ambedkar, the Superintendent of the project, said that it is his opinion that GT&T should inform the various regions where they have cables running under the surface. “We do not know that they have cables under our road surface. Initially, the idea is for it to be in the road shoulders and not the road structure itself,” he pointed out.
However, at Republic Drive, Triumph, East Coast Demerara, where the works are ongoing, GT&T officials said they are evaluating the extent of the damage and are working on the replacement of the cables after which they will complete the paperwork. As a result, one official stated, the cost of damage could not be estimated at this time. “There is semi-major damage here.
We are working on replacing the cable and pipes and hopefully this will be finished by (today),” the man stated, adding that the contractor will be required to pay for the damage caused.
Without informing
Meanwhile, residents say that while they are thankful for the repair of the street which has been in a deplorable state and virtually impassable, the manner in which the contractors are working has caused concern.
“They dug this place since last Wednesday without informing residents or anybody. They are very inexperienced people… they dug out the GT&T cables so the entire housing scheme is without phone service. The entire underground cable is destroyed. They are supposed to be repairing roads but have only created a mess,” a resident told this newspaper.
The resident said that the technique the contractors have used seems strange as they have dug the entire road, leaving residents without a passageway to drive or even a footpath. “We have to have access to the roads in case of an emergency, supposed someone falls sick? … I know when the Ministry of Public Works did work they did half and leave half so people can come and go out,” she recalled.
Residents explained that they are forced to use Dasrath Street which is located along the seawall but as the road work moves up in front of their homes, the residents are boxed in.
“The first thing they were supposed to do is contact GWI and GT&T… the people who are doing this road don’t know what they are doing… I come out this morning and asked him ‘boy what you doing’ and he said they tell him to dig out the road,” one resident stated.
Regional Executive Officer, Deolall Rooplall, told this newspaper that the $4,277,254 road work project began some nine days ago and the regional council had initially set out to patch the surface but found that it was beyond patching. “Further investigation revealed that the foundation would’ve gone, totally eroded. It was made with all sorts of stuff that people would have just patched with over the years,” he stated.
He added too that commercial activities in the area had increased in terms of heavy machinery businesses and as a result containers, excavators and other similar vehicles would use that specific pathway. “Quite a number of business places would have now ventured into this area so the foundation of the road itself would have been inadequate for the heavy traffic… So we decided to re-do the entire foundation and build it up because in a couple of weeks it would have gone again,” he explained.
With regards to the complaints made by residents of the road being done on the entire width, Ambedkar stated that the budget of the regional system does not facilitate large scale construction and as such the narrow road could not be widened to allow what residents had described. “I cannot go and find money to invest in an 18 feet wide road. The maximum we can go is 14 feet. The width does not allow us to do half and leave half,” he posited.
It was noted that bad weather conditions had caused the work to be stalled but it should be completed within the next three to four days providing that there is good weather.
In July of this year, residents of that area threatened to block Republic Drive, suggesting that it would have been the only way to persuade the authorities to fix it.
