Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says the walkover el­e­va­tors close to Pow­der Mag­a­zine hous­ing de­vel­op­ment are to be fixed short­ly. He was re­spond­ing to claims by Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne the el­e­va­tors nev­er worked since be­ing in­stalled.

They were in­stalled dur­ing a spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny at the Diego Mar­tin High­way, Co­corite, on Au­gust 27, 2010. They were put there at a cost of $1.2 mil­lion by the Min­istry of Works' Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing of Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE). They are in­tend­ed for use by the dis­abled and se­nior cit­i­zens.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, Browne said they "failed to work right af­ter the grand (in­stal­la­tion) cer­e­mo­ny and re­main com­plete­ly in­op­er­a­ble to this day." He said res­i­dents of Co­corite, in­clud­ing the dis­abled and the el­der­ly, still have to "dodge on­com­ing traf­fic to cross the high­way."

He said the shafts have been left com­plete­ly open and were a "grave and on­go­ing threat to the safe­ty of all users of the walkover, in­clud­ing chil­dren." Browne said he wrote to Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, to deal with the prob­lem but to no avail.

He de­scribed the project as just an­oth­er pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise on the part of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Warn­er said it was in­cor­rect to claim the el­e­va­tors nev­er worked. He said he was aware of the need to re­pair them. Warn­er said "a part" was be­ing im­port­ed to fix the prob­lem and they should be op­er­a­tional again short­ly.