Having to trek five hours to the carrier stand is what Tubarua villagers at Naitasiri are facing on a daily basis.

Village headman, Petero Udonu said they leave the village at 11pm to catch the 4am carrier to Suva.

“We are lucky if there are horses to carry our yields to the road otherwise we carry it on our shoulders,” he said.    

Mr Udonu said after Tropical Cyclone Winston, over 20 houses were destroyed and the problem now was the transporting of house materials to the village.

“We had to fold and tie the corrugated iron sheets together and carry it to the village, the timbers and blocks are loaded in bamboo rafts and we had to pull it upstream, this takes at least five to six hours,” he said.

Mr Udonu said that their forefathers had been doing that back in the day.

But he said: “at least our children should not face the same problem.

“It’s very difficult when we need to take sick patients to the hospital or the pregnant mothers,” he said.

He said that some of the children in the village had never been to the city simply because of the difficulty in transportation.

Mr Udonu said it was very difficult and all they needed was the road access to their village.

“All we’re requesting is a good access road,” he said.

He said that he was grateful to the village men for the team work.

Edited by Rusiate Mataika

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