A WOMAN is in severe pain and could hardly walk, but in spite of her discomfort, she knows that counting on a taxi to take her to the hospital is out of the question, because of the deplorable condition of all the roads leading to her home in Bare Root, East Coast Demerara.With no choice left her at the time, she endured the pain for what seemed an eternity, as painkillers seemed not to have any positive effect on what ailed her, and all her family could do was trust in God.

This is just one of the many scenarios that starkly bring to the fore the plight of residents of Bare Root, a village aback Bachelor’s Adventure, where many of these villagers are forced to walk for miles on end daily to get to a point where they could catch public transportation to get to work or school or wherever it is they need to go.

But the state of the roads are but the least of their worries, as Bare Rooters are also beset by other infrastructural problems, as well as social ones; and having reached the end of their tether, they’re now calling on the Government for help, as the situation is becoming unbearable.

POTHOLES EVERYWHERE
When the Guyana Chronicle visited the community Friday, numerous potholes could be seen along both Grant and Middle Roads and the two cross streets connecting them.

Besides the tall bushes along Grant Road, the vegetation in some trenches is so thick that it is preventing the water from flowing freely, which, in the long-run, could lead to mosquito infestation.

“The situation with the road is very terrible, and persons who have emergency suffer the most,” Odama Siland told Guyana Chronicle.
“Those of us who have to work, we normally encounter difficulties having the taxis coming in,” she said.

Because public transportation, mainly the minibuses, do not ply Bare Root roads, residents are forced to depend heavily on the services of taxis to get in and out of the village, which goes deep into the backlands to where rice fields once were.

“Taxis do not want to come in because of the holes on the roads,” Siland said.
“It’s dangerous… They would normally go over to the other village; that’s Dazzell Scheme. And we that live way down to the back, we have to walk to probably 17th Street because most of them come up to 17th Street; so we go across there and catch the taxi.”

DECIDEDLY DICEY
But the situation could get decidedly dicey whenever it rains, as taxi drivers simply refuse to take the fares of residents even to 17th Street, for fear of damaging their vehicles.

Taxi drivers normally charge $400 to take a person as close as possible to Bare Root, but because of the risk involved, given the state of some of the roads, many absolutely refuse to undertake the journey.

“I personally think that something needs to be done about the road situation. You will call and people will bluntly refuse to come in here, so you have to walk a particular distance, or you go to another village in order to secure transportation to get out and to get in,” Siland said.

According to reports, Grant Road was repaired a few times in recent years, but as one resident observed, because those repairs were never done properly, the road starts to deteriorate in just a matter of months.

“The method (materials) that they use to do the road is(are) mostly sand, loam and stone; just about a half-inch to three-quarter-inch of stone,” said one male Bare Root resident.

“It has been done in a premature way; it needs to be asphalted, and you don’t have to do it again.
“It don’t make sense you doing one road six, seven times; do it one time and finish,” he added.

NOT TO BE BLAMED
Meanwhile, taxi drivers are saying that they are not to be blamed for what residents are experiencing, because servicing the route by way of any of the village’s three roads — Church Road, Middle Road or Grant Road — is too costly.
“I does go up front because the road bad; I don’t reach down inside deh,” one driver said, adding:
“They only do the main road and they try doing the middle street; they do a part and stop, and that part that they throw the pitch on, by vehicle going down there in the rain the holes just start getting big so I does just cut off there.”

As he went on to explain, “In case of emergency, I don’t know what will happen; people gon suffer, and you can’t blame the taxi men dem, because $400 and $300 can’t buy back no part.”

Grant Road is the worst, and though part of Church Road was recently repaired, it’s already showing signs of deteriorating because of shoddy work, the man said.
He said he knows of many cases where pregnant women have had to move to another village or to the front of the village until they were ready to give birth.