LORNA KNIGHT is living in fear in her St Joseph home.
Knight says she is having restless days and nights as she has witnessed vehicles swerve onto her property at Airy Hill to avoid colliding with oncoming traffic – as a result of a wide open hole left by the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) after a mains replacement.
“I am afraid to live in my own house,” she said. “When I am in the kitchen cooking I have to be running out all of the time.”
She said the mains replacement was done just before Christmas. “And they leave it wide open . . . so anything climbing the hill and something coming down, they are going to take my house.”
Knight said she called the BWA twice and on each occasion a man who answered the telephone said the matter would be investigated.
She explained that BWA officials held a town hall meeting in her area last year to update residents about their mains replacement programme and she asked specifically if the BWA or the Minister of Transport and Works was responsible for covering up the holes when they dug the road, but no response was forthcoming.
She complained that there were other areas along Airy Hill which the BWA had also excavated and left open but the hole in front of her home was the biggest.
Joy-Ann Haigh, the communications specialist at the BWA, said there had been some delays recently due to the fact that the BWA had tendered for contractors to do roadworks after repairs.
“We are in the process of finalising this arrangement and when that happens we will be able to respond a lot faster. At the moment we are working with the MTW and they are assisting us until we award a contractor,” she said.
