CAMPBELLTON ROAD, Hanover – The death of an elderly man who plunged over a bridge while riding his bicycle home from church Sunday night in this community, has angered residents who accused the National Works Agency’s (NWA) of ignoring frequent calls to install rails along the structure.

The deceased has been identified as 88-year-old farmer Willsford Cunningham.

The irate residents of this normally quiet community is demanding swift action from the NWA to prevent any further accidents on the bridge on which they said a similar incident involving another senior citizen occurred earlier this year. The residents also complained that the bridge floods whenever it rains heavily and have expressed concerns over the absence of streetlights in the area.

“I feel he (Cunningham) was coming in the dark, lost control and plunged over the bridge and I believe it needs to be fixed this is the second man to end up like this. The road is narrow and very busy,” one female family member said yesterday.

“So many people pass on this bridge day and night… it is dangerous and there is no light so it is so dark at nights. When the rain fall the bridge flood out,” another angry resident remarked. “There is nothing there to hold him so he must have lost control and went over the bridge. I feel that the government is supposed to fix the bridge. This is the second person who died because of this bridge.”

Yesterday, People’s National Party candidate for the area, Ian Hayles, chided the agency claiming he too had made representation asking for the bridge to be repaired.

“Work has been approved for the repair of the bridge. The NWA has to be more proactive in terms of the needs of the people. If work had started this wouldn’t have happened,” Hayles commented.

Meanwhile, NWA’s communication and customer services manager Stephen Shaw promised that work would get underway on a parapet wall which broke off the bridge that the agency inherited from the Hanover Parish Council “a couple years ago”.

“It is an unfortunate incident. We have a disaster mitigation programme to which we have put this particular piece of work. We are at the stage where we have had discussions with the citizenship for the area and we intend to execute the work,” Shaw explained yesterday. “We just have to make sure that all the paper work is in place for us to proceed. We should see some activity there by the end of the month,” he added.