Materials sitting idly over two years as Good Hope road continues to deteriorate

Jan 08, 2017 News

Residents of Good Hope village on the East Coast of Demerara are presently frustrated with the state of the streets within their community. They are claiming that since before the rainy season started, no work was done on a number of the roads as it relates to patching and filling potholes. Also, residents complained about lack of cleaning of the drains behind their yards. Further, the kokers have benefitted from little to no cleaning thereby increasing the risk and instances of flooding.

This newspaper received numerous complaints over the past few weeks and visited the community on Wednesday last to investigate the matter. Upon entering Phase One of the Housing Scheme, the main access road was in good condition, however, the smaller access streets are indeed in a deplorable state.

The deplorable state of a street in Good Hope Housing Scheme.

Now that there has been frequent rainfall the condition of the roads has worsened, making it difficult for residents to traverse with their vehicles much less on foot. A number of streets were observed to be filled with wide and deep potholes resembling craters.

According to one resident, this has been ongoing for quite some time.

“The NDC (Neighbourhood Democratic Council) not doing anything; nothing was done since they entered office after the Local Government Elections. The only thing good they doing is garbage collection, but the roads need to be fixed!”

He said that the holes have never been so big, since they were first done several years ago. Added to this, several residents told this newspaper that the Mon Repos/La Renaissance NDC had within its compound, material which can be used to patch the holes in the streets.

To verify this, this publication visited the NDC office and saw the said material lying in the compound being taken over by weeds. Upon asking to speak with the Chairman of the council, Ayube Mohammed, Kaieteur News was told neither he nor the overseer was in office.

The residents said that the condition of the streets is worse when one goes further into the village – for example in Phase Two and Phase Three. It is unclear why the material is sitting idly by in the NDC compound, especially since it is evident that the roads are in disrepair and in need of urgent attention.

Material which can be used to fix the roads being taken over by weeds in the NDC compound.

Another resident said that he was told that the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) was making it difficult for the NDC to go ahead with doing the works. However, he maintained that this is inexcusable, “the region can’t stop them based on patching, I’m sure they have enough to finance this work, but for two years now nothing ain’t do. This is slackness.”

He added that in addition to having to live in such conditions, vehicle owners are now being forced to put aside extra money, which is hard to come by, in order to pay for repairs to their vehicles.

“These holes damaging our vehicles when manoeuvring in and out, and secondly, you can’t buy used tyres anymore, brand new tyres are expensive. It is not fair for us to have to buy new tyres and not have proper roads to drive on, especially since we are paying taxes for the maintenance of these roads. It is unfair and we are calling on the NDC and if possible the government, to look into this matter.”

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