Charles Kong Soo

Di­rec­tor of the High­ways Di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Roger Ganesh says no mat­ter how many times his di­vi­sion re­pairs the Pow­der Mag­a­zine walkover el­e­va­tors in Co­corite they will just as quick­ly be van­dalised.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said the el­e­va­tor project was orig­i­nal­ly un­der­tak­en by the Pure (Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy) Unit of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, and had been trans­ferred to the high­ways di­vi­sion.

"When they did that con­tract, they nev­er put in any sus­tain­able plan for the main­te­nance of the equip­ment," Ganesh said."Any­thing me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal, you must have a main­te­nance as­pect of it to sus­tain it, you don't just build it and hope for it to last for­ev­er."Un­for­tu­nate­ly it was passed on to me now to re­pair it since it was van­dalised, and of course, it took some time in get­ting el­e­va­tor spe­cial­ists to look at it, eval­u­ate what was wrong, what was stolen, get a quote, cost to re­pair, which was done in the last cou­ple of months.

"We have now award­ed a con­tract to a com­pa­ny and we're right now un­der­tak­ing the re­pair works, re­in­stalling all the stolen equip­ment, parts that were dam­aged and van­dalised."We're hop­ing to have it func­tion­al with­in prob­a­bly two weeks' time, but the prob­lem will arise again be­cause of van­dal­ism."

Ganesh said the el­e­va­tors came to his di­vi­sion dys­func­tion­al be­cause of van­dal­ism and he didn't en­vi­sion them re­main­ing in work­ing or­der for very long when they are recom­mis­sioned as they would be re­peat­ed­ly de­stroyed or van­dalised.He said it was not fea­si­ble to have po­lice mon­i­tor­ing the el­e­va­tors 24/7 as they would prob­a­bly work for one day or two and that would be the end of that.

Ganesh said cam­eras and re­in­forc­ing the se­cu­ri­ty points were in­ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing the air-con­di­tion­ing units, mo­tors, elec­tri­cal equip­ment and light­ing stolen or dam­aged.He said in­stead of build­ing a stair­way-type cross­ing to cater to a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of res­i­dents liv­ing in Pow­der Mag­a­zine who were dis­abled, it would have been ide­al to build a pedes­tri­an cross­ing with ramps.

On the dis­re­pair to the West Mall walkover, he said it was gross­ly over-ex­ag­ger­at­ed, and the con­crete and steel foun­da­tion was struc­tural­ly sound, with just a few cor­rod­ed spots on the walkover that need­ed rudi­men­ta­ry re­pairs and one of the step rail­ings which was rust­ed was re­placed.

The T&T Guardian con­firmed the re­cent work done on the walkover, as shown by the fresh an­ti-cor­ro­sive coat­ing at sev­er­al points on the struc­ture. The pedes­tri­ans us­ing the West Mall walkover said noth­ing was wrong with it and they felt safe us­ing it and it just need­ed rou­tine main­te­nance like touch­ing up mi­nor rust spots.When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the West Mall and Pow­der Mag­a­zine walkovers, sev­er­al pedes­tri­ans were caught on cam­era run­ning the gaunt­let of speed­ing cars on the high­way in­stead of us­ing the walkovers.