Cleaning the trenches, dumping mud and grass on the roadways

Feb 17, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,

First somebody get “a vaps” and decided to clean the trench in Church Street. Maybe Mash is coming, or the new Council wants to show that they are working. The crews come under cover of darkness, leaving grass and slush in their wake on the roadway, seriously narrowing the carriageway and causing a road hazard, as the grass could not be seen at night and the road surface became slick like oil. No doubt content with their handiwork, the contractors next swung into action on Vlissengen Road.
Just when you think it was safe to go back in the water, yuh lie!! They start again, this time on Carifesta Avenue. More bush strewn on the roadway, narrowing a carriageway already narrowed by the median erected throughout the length of the roadway. Again, creating a traffic hazard when night falls, and you can’t make out the bush on the roadway. Worse, along the East Coast Highway, another crew left small piles of mud, not grass, on the right side of the fast lane heading westward, next to the median!
So why is it that our administrators can’t think things through properly? The contract to clean the trenches should have included a clause to the effect that the bush, once removed from the trenches, must be loaded onto trucks and carried away to some open space for dumping. If the contractor did not have vehicles, could have subcontracted that task or bid for the contract as a joint venture with a transport company. The lawyer who drafted that contract and all who were responsible for its approval should be tarred and feathered in Stabroek Market Square at high noon, for causing this colossal mess and endangering lives!
And why the silo approach to the management of our dear Garden City? Who is responsible for cleaning the trenches (actually, for maintaining the trenches in a clean state on a regular basis?). The M&CC? Well, His Worship the Pandit knows a thing or two about cleaning up – don’t know if his political advisor advises him on such things as well – and he had a good photo op recently, but somebody should enlighten him on the concept of division of labour. Didn’t it occur to these rocket scientists that they were solving one problem, the filthy clogged trenches, by creating another, the dirty roadway littered with grass and silt, with apparent wanton abandon for the traffic hazard they were creating? They are just as bad as those who drop the oversize speed bumps on us, without warning, and without reflective warning paint or signage. And what about the Ministry of Public Works, Road Engineer’s Department, and the Police Traffic Department? Don’t they have a stake in this? Or do they just drive past, slow down, watch and observe the grass and silt, shake their heads and keep getting up? And that’s it!
Vision is a hell of a thing and some things are predictable. Are city management, the road works people and the traffic department waiting for the crisis that will descend upon the East Coast when Movietowne opens, or are they going to widen UG road now? That road right now can’t take the traffic at peak times from UG, Cyril Potter College, CARICOM, Giftland and the Convention Centre, and it seems as if Movietowne might have a rear access road leading into UG Road!

Respectfully,
Road user

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