Incomplete roadworks leave Petit Bourg residents fuming

RESIDENTS of Thompson Lane, Petit Bourg, are demanding that local government completes roadworks started in June.

They complained the incomplete work has left the road dilapidated, caused damage to personal property and because of reduced accessibility, could pose a threat to the lives of the elderly people living there.

The street, a narrow lane off Irving Street with a steep incline, is home to several elderly people and to a home for the elderly which has 13 residents.

Gillian David, the youngest home owner at the age of 53, and manager of Shoshanna’s Geriatric Home, said because the road was narrow and steep, ambulances and garbage trucks were reluctant to drive up it, but now that the road had been dug up, they flatly refuse.

“It is ridiculous. The ambulance already had a problem coming down this street. Now they can’t come at all. My staff can’t come in, especially at night. They have to park on another side road and walk through an alley.

"I can’t park on the road. I can’t get groceries to my house.

"The rubbish truck, they hardly came on this street to provide the service we pay taxes for, and now it's even worse.

"And every time the rain falls the stones washing down the road.”

David told Newsday in emergency situations when her clients need to be taken to a hospital, either she or her staff would have to put them in their car, and take them for treatment, or wait for an emergency vehicle to park at the top of the street and take them up the hill to the vehicle – more than 150 metres away from the geriatric home.

Robert Parris, another elderly home owner, said as a dialysis patient the impassable road is a problem.

“When you come back from dialysis, it is a weakening thing,” he said. “After going through that, sometimes I can’t even access my own home. And when it rains it's worse.”

He said rainwater and sediment settle in a nearby river, which was also set to have a bridge built across it. Parris said it was built and broken down on more than one occasion and now water settles in the construction area where the bridge is being built.

Wendell Sylvester, a 27-year-old resident, said, “The road is causing damage to my car. It is damaging the ball joints, cradles and other parts of my car.

"I can’t even repair them until the road is fixed. If I repair it and use this road, it will mash up again and I would have to repair it again.”

He drove up the road to show the effect it has on his car. Because the sand, gravel and sediment on the road are loose, the car cannot pick up any traction. The tyres slip in the loose gravel, and stones fly into the undercarriage, damaging vital parts.

Residents say the same thing happens to every car on the road.

Councillor Darren Winchester admitted there were delays in the project but said it would be completed either by or before the end of November.

Winchester told Newsday the delays came out of problems between the contractors and the corporation that needed to be “ironed out.”

Asked what were the problems, Winchester declined comment.

He also said he could not remember who was awarded the contract.

“But we do apologise for the inconvenience. We are not in any way unfeeling toward the discomfort that the residents feel. We are working to rectify the problems. They will return to a way of life that they are accustomed to. The unexpected just happens in projects sometimes,” Winchester said.

But the residents, fed up with the length of time that the work is taking, say they feel neglected by the corporation and their representatives.

“We have always been the bastard lane in Petit Bourg,” David said. “Maybe if we were on one of those ‘bad boy’ lanes, maybe if we were a little more belligerent, they would have done something for us.”

“We don’t want to have to drag tyres in the road and light them on fire, but it seems like that is the only way to get things done here,” Parris said.