Richard Lord

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed to al­lo­cate more than $446 mil­lion to con­struct an over­pass at the in­ter­sec­tion of the South­ern Main Road and the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in Curepe. This was re­vealed by Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. Warn­er said the traf­fic lights at the in­ter­sec­tion would be re­moved. He said on the com­ple­tion of the 18-month project, there would be a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in the traf­fic con­ges­tion in the area. He said traf­fic lights at Bam­boo and Val­park were al­so to be re­moved.

Warn­er said the project would be man­aged by Nid­co. He said ten­ders for the project would be ad­ver­tised by No­vem­ber this year and an award would be made by April next year. He said the fund­ing would be made avail­able in two tranch­es -$291.3 mil­lion in fis­cal 2012 and $222.2 mil­lion in fis­cal 2013. Warn­er said lands oc­cu­pied by the Kay Don­na Dri­ve In cin­e­ma, a ser­vice sta­tion and two near­by homes would be re­lo­cat­ed to al­low for con­struc­tion of the project.

Mean­while, Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved fund­ing to the tune of $4.88 mil­lion for the up­com­ing Air­tel T20 fi­nals in In­dia. He said many min­is­ters open­ly ex­pressed their sup­port for the Daren Gan­ga-led team, dur­ing yes­ter­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing. T&T won many hearts in the com­pe­ti­tion in 2009 when it reached the fi­nal match of the com­pe­ti­tion. (RL)