Vale View Project kicks up another storm of complaints from residents

Residents living just off St Lucien Road, Diego Martin, near the controversial Vale View Housing Development, are up in arms about last weekend’s incident in which a crane skidded out of control on a narrow, hilly road. The crane pulled down overhead electricity lines, uprooted a wooden utility pole and caused massive power outages and traffic pile-ups. When Newsday visited the scene yesterday, TTEC workmen were busy repairing the damaged electricity lines from a home nearby. One resident sighed, saying: “I wonder if there will be any compensation for us when these things happen.”

Residents complained about the extra dust and slush created since the project came into the area. From the location of the project, it was evident why this was possible. Looking up from St Lucien Road, the housing development project looms high into the hills, sandy tracks surround mounting steel beams. They also complained about mud slides, traffic jams, closure of the St Lucien Road and power outages. At least three residents have taken the development owner, Gowakan Mahabir to court on matters relating to the security of their homes and property. The electricity outage from the weekend’s incident also triggered off a water supply problem, affecting several other residents.

Dwayne Pantin, said: “The electricity was the first thing to go, then the water, because the current is what supply the pumps, so, anyone in the neighbourhood who did not have tanks was without water.” Most of the residents Newsday spoke to were afraid to give their names but willing to tell their complaints. Referring to Sunday’s incident, one person said: “A woman nearly dead here because of the crane. The crane nearly crash straight into her house.”
An elderly resident said she is fed-up of the dust being created because of the project. “The dust hum-bugging me. The whole house is usually very dusty. I have to keep changing the curtains, wiping and dusting all the time,” she said.

Another female resident lamented the discomfort one man could cause to an entire neighbourhood. For many others, whose health and mental well-being are not directly being affected, there are others who are concerned about the impact of environmental degradation. “Every time rain falls, I thought at one time, the whole mountain would come washing down. They had workers digging up the catchment, you come through the Vale and you look up into the mountains and you see they are just cutting through the mountain and that will cause problems,” she said. Referring to Sunday’s incident, she described the whole scenario as “ridiculous.”

“We were watching television as a family when we heard this loud noise and rushed outside. If that pole was not there, he could have crashed straight into someone’s house,” she said. While most of the residents seemed upset over the disadvantages of the project, one person thought some good might just come out of the development.
If it is providing homes and jobs for people, he is not too upset about it, he said. An official of Gopeesingh General Contractors (1990) Ltd, whose company was labelled on the crane, said the incident could not be avoided since the earth “gave” under the vehicle and caused the skidding. Mahabir, the owner of the development, refused to make any comments on the issue.

From as early as June 2003 and throughout the rest of the year into this year, there were several reports indicating discrepancies over the development project. In a Newsday issue, October 28, 2003, a report stated that St Lucien Road was closed off to vehicular traffic because of the laying of pipes. On October 23, 2003, an official of the Diego Martin Regional Corporation said it did not give permission for the closure of the road, which also fell under the Ministry of Works.

On October 21, 2003, MP for Diego Martin, Colm Imbert, said he had written to the Minister of Works, Franklyn Khan, calling on him to intervene into the development project. At the time, he felt something was very wrong, in that the manner in which the private developer can close down a main road the way he did, was contrary to practice. He said a developer is only given permission to block or dig a small part of the main road at a time and only between the hours of 9 pm and 4 am.