Despite the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) repairing part of Agriculture Road, residents of Mon Repos and the surrounding areas, who regularly ply the main thoroughfare, say that the “most deplorable” parts have not been fixed and they are calling on the authorities to complete the entire road.
Residents have complained several times about the “almost impassable” road, which runs about two miles south from the Embankment Road, and is used by thousands every day to access their homes and entities such as the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA) and the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI).
When Stabroek News visited the roadway earlier this year, there were large potholes, some of which spanned the entire width, and smaller circular ones which were deeper, scattered throughout its length. Motorists using the thoroughfare had to carefully negotiate the holes, some of which were too large to avoid, and drivers had no choice but to crawl through the rugged sections.
“It’s been like this for a long time and all that does happen some people does put some bricks in them, but that don’t make any sense, cause they does break up fast, fast,” Raj Narine, a resident of the area, related to Stabroek News on Friday.
The man had explained that while it is hard to traverse the roads during the day, at night the road becomes “almost impassable” and very dangerous for both drivers and cyclists. “You see the size of them holes? They real big and if somebody don’t know the road and they come driving through, they vehicles going to get bruk up.
If a man riding through on his motorcycle he could even fall and get seriously injured,” the man said, while adding that the road needs to be fixed as soon as possible, since it attracts a large amount of traffic.
When this newspaper visited on Friday, only about 300 metres from its northern end had been repaired and resurfaced with fresh asphalt.
While the residents say that they are happy, they explained that the critical areas were not addressed and the road is still “practically impassable.”
“Well, they fixed part of it. Just part, and we happy but they didn’t fix the most important part. They didn’t fix the big holes that you have to do all sorts of things with your vehicles to pass.
They didn’t fix the big, big holes by GSA or by NAREI or by the car wash,” Chris Singh, a resident, told Stabroek News.
The man explained that drivers are still at the mercy of the road and still incur unnecessary expenses because of the deplorable state of the road.
Some residents were forced to fill the holes with cement and other obstacles, in a bid to make them level with the road in order to prevent further damage to their cars.
However, they explained that the “quick fix” does not last long and the road quickly reverts to its “original” condition in a matter of days.
“We can’t remember how it used to look without these holes and other things, so when we say original is just like this we mean.
They have to fix the whole thing, it doesn’t make sense you just fix the front, which barely had as much holes as the back and leave all of this behind. Even if they were not going to lay the asphalt on the entire road they should’ve just patched some of these big holes,” the man observed.
