A letter in the June 10th edition of Stabroek News regarding the deplorable condition of Dasrat Street, Triumph Front Lands, has caught the attention of Region Four Chairman, Daniel Seeram, who says that aggregate works will commence on the road this week.
“The NDC (Neighbourhood Democratic Council) will now be making some provisions to have aggregate go into the area… The NDC chairman visited the area [over the weekend] and has informed me that steps will now be taken to have remedial works done on the road”, Seeram said. A photograph published along with the letter showed a potholed street filled with water. This, according to the Chairman, was the result of a broken pipe. Seeram said that on Thursday he reached out to the NDC chairman and a representative from the Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) about both the broken pipe and road. The pipe he added was fixed on Thursday. According to the letter, a construction company undertaking the rebuilding of a wooden bridge situated at the beginning of Dasrat Street, provided residents with a notice (dated May 31st) and received (on Sunday June 6th) informing them that construction of a concrete bridge would commence seven days later.
However, when this newspaper visited Dasrat Street on June 13th, residents expressed concerns on how the contractor was prioritising the intended construction. Residents said that if the bridge was constructed before the fixing of the road, in the midst of the seasonal rainfall, access to the street would be impossible as most of it would be prone to flooding. When presented with this scenario, Seeram said, “I’ll be looking into it… to see if we could have some collaboration [among] the NDC, the region and the contractor to mitigate this issue that could probably arise.”
Dasrat Street lies adjacent to the Regional Democratic Council’s housing compound, also in Triumph. A small but nicely paved pathway leads into the RDC’s compound. This newspaper, in speaking with one of the engineers living in the compound (no name given), said that the responsible authority for (a five-year) plan is the Neighbourhood Democratic Council. This plan is then moved up the Local Government chain of command, the next stop being the RDC. The engineer noted that for any works to have been done on Dasrat Street it would have necessitated being factored into a previous NDC plan. However, the Regional Chairman said that if the condition of a road is thought to be ‘very deplorable’ then attention to that road need not be in a five-year plan but can be identified for ‘emergency works’.
“The roads that are done within the constituencies are brought into the RDC by way of the Neighbourhood Democratic Council… It’s up to the NDC to (identify) these roads…” said the Regional Chairman. He further said that the only way a regional councillor could add a road to the list of roads up for construction is if it’s considered “very deplorable”. Seeram also said that following the construction of the bridge, minor repairs will be done on the road at the level of the NDC. Unless the NDC reports that the project is beyond their control and the road becomes inoperable and is deemed for “emergency works”, only then will the RDC step in. “I’m not sure at this point in time if we had budgeted for any other works for that road to be done for this year”, the Regional Chair-man said when asked whether any plan is in place to have the road asphalted. Less than a month after Stabroek News published an article where councillors from the Beterverwagting (BV)/Triumph NDC were thrilled to say that they were progressive in the BV/Triumph areas through their many successful projects, a resident of Triumph begged to differ through a letter.
One resident told this newspaper that she has been living on Dasrat Street all of her years, and the street was done only once. She pointed out that the one time it was done, the new road then was “only an inch of bricks and tar”. She added that the beginning of the street (where the bridge is situated) was recently redone and remains in good condition. Stabroek News observed potholes filled in with sand by a resident whose house is currently under construction. She noted that more than a week ago and before the sand-filling of the holes, a police patrol that went through the street got stuck in one end of a pothole. “This is one street that don’t get the attention of the NDC and the RDC”, she lamented. Another resident added that it has been almost a decade since Dasrat Street was last fixed.
