AFTER years of traversing and maneuvering around potholes and depressions, residents of Hope Lowland, East Coast Demerara, will soon see a phased road rehabilitation project commencing.

This is according to Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, who inspected several of the roads in the community on Monday.

Residents in the community would have complained bitterly to the minister about their challenges while traversing the roads.

One resident, Lilawattie Jaigobin, protested that she has lived in the community for ten years. No one has paid attention to the cries of residents regarding the dreadful conditions of the road.

Meanwhile, another resident said the road conditions make it extremely difficult for persons to traverse both by vehicle and on foot. The resident added that the road condition worsens during the rainy season.

In addressing the complaints, Minister Indar disclosed that the ministry would be deploying a team of engineers on Tuesday to begin an assessment of how much work will need to be done in the community.

“Engineers will be here tomorrow [Tuesday] to pick up the roads because every single road in the community is bad. All are the same conditions; the structures have failed,” Minister Indar said.

He continued: “We have to fix that, we will have some engineers come and measure out the various roads and the access road to bring you into this community; this community is a densely populated region. So, we will have to make sure that we pick up some costings for these roads.”

The minister noted that the main access road in the community will take precedent in the rehabilitation project, while the smaller roads in the community will be done in a phased manner.

He stressed that conditions of the roads in the community call for the immediate attention of the ministry, especially in the advent of the rainy season.

“On inspection of this community, they have a lot of, you know, dilapidated infrastructure, if you check around, none of the roads is good. Every single road has massive number of potholes, some have massive failures in the road. And in the rainy season, it’s worse because all the potholes end up being filled with water,” he said.

The minister noted that action will take place soon as a report is received from the respective engineers on how much work will be done in the community and what the cost will be to commence the project.

The minster added that funding would most likely come from the Ministry’s budgetary allocation for 2022