RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Phe­no­la Bachan spent al­most 40 years as a teacher, work­ing sin­gle-hand­ed­ly to build her home so that she could have com­fort in her twi­light years.

But eight years af­ter her re­tire­ment, Bachan is spend­ing every last cent to save the house she worked hard to build.

Perched on the edge of a land­slip at Pa­pourie Road, Up­per Bar­rack­pore, Bachan said it pains her heart to see her beau­ti­ful home crum­bling be­fore her eyes.

“It hard to see every­thing crack­ing up. The house is split down the mid­dle in two. All of this start­ed in Jan­u­ary when a hair­line crack de­vel­oped on the road. Then it start­ed to get wider and we think that a wa­ter line may have caused it,” Bachan said.

From Feb­ru­ary to now, Bachan has spent over $300,000, monies from her gra­tu­ity and sav­ings to in­stall auger pil­ing 32 feet deep to build two rub­ble drains and a re­ten­tion wall to safe­guard her house. She said the wa­ter line is buried about five feet be­low the ground and she went to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty hop­ing to have a team in­ves­ti­gate the cause of the land­slip and fix any pos­si­ble leaks.

But Bachan said all her ef­forts were in vain.

“I went by WASA and they said they will send some­one. No­body came. I went back and they said they sent the re­port to the man­ag­er and they will send some­one, but up to now, no­body has come,” she said.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, con­trac­tors were dig­ging a trench on one side of the crum­bling house.

Bachan be­lieves that the re­tain­ing walls she built are what is hold­ing up the re­main­ing part of the road. The area is land­slip-prone and al­ready, two oth­er hous­es have crum­bled. Bachan be­lieves her home is next.

“I need some­one to come here and fix this land­slip be­fore I lose my home,” she said.

Two heaps of boul­ders were placed on ei­ther side of the land­slip but res­i­dents say this will do noth­ing to stop the slip­page.

“They need to do shoring that is deep enough to hold up any fur­ther slip­page,” a res­i­dent said. Mean­while, com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Ed­ward Mood­ie, who came to Bachan’s as­sis­tance, said the Min­istry of Works should ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty and prop­er­ly com­pen­sate Bachan and oth­ers like her.

“All min­istries are in­sured with risk in­sur­ance. Once the road is a de­clared as­set of the min­istry, they are li­able for loss of prop­er­ty. And once the own­er can show that the loss of prop­er­ty was due to the road­way, they are en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion,” Mood­ie said.

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan said he was un­aware of this in­sur­ance that can cov­er peo­ple’s homes.

“I have no idea of this and I’ve no spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion on that area but I will have to ask for a re­port. Who­ev­er is ad­vis­ing her will have to seek fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and re­late that to the min­istry. I don’t know if the min­istry car­ries in­sur­ance for this kind of thing and it’s the first I’m hear­ing of that,” Sinanan said.

He added, “Be­cause of the amount of rain­fall we are get­ting, the land around Trinidad has been sat­u­rat­ed. In land­slip-prone ar­eas like this, it has been a chal­lenge but we are try­ing our best to make sure that con­nec­tiv­i­ty is main­tained.”

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