Yvonne Ba­boolal

An es­ti­mat­ed 280,000 man-hours were lost in the traf­fic hold-up on the Beetham High­way over the last two days, says the Down­town Own­ers and?Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma). This was caused when part of the high­way at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, col­lapsed on Wednes­day. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said: "We es­ti­mate that an ad­di­tion­al three hours were re­quired by more than 60,000 peo­ple yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) in try­ing to make their way from east and south Trinidad to Port-of-Spain. "This, cal­cu­lat­ed rough­ly, meant there were some 180,000 lost man-hours due to the hole in the high­way. "Al­so, an­oth­er 100,000 man-hours could have been lost on Wednes­day,"?he said.

The big­ger loss, how­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Aboud, was the loss of con­fi­dence caused by the re­al­i­sa­tion that, af­ter 50 years of in­de­pen­dence, there were still few new op­tions avail­able in road in­fra­struc­ture. "Ever since I was a child I have heard about a high­way along the coast from Port-of-Spain to Ch­agua­nas, a high­way to?Ch­aguara­mas and an­oth­er high­way to Diego Mar­tin," he said. Aboud said ar­eas like Mar­aval and St Ann's had on­ly one ac­cess and ex­it point. "If you get blocked in Co­corite or Mar­aval, you would have a cat­a­stroph­ic sit­u­a­tion," he said. Asked if he felt the au­thor­i­ties prop­er­ly han­dled the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion caused by the hole, he replied: "I don't want to an­swer that ques­tion." He added, though, "They have failed, in that they have not cre­at­ed new op­tions over the last 50 years...It's a very un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion." Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop said it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the rel­e­vant min­istry (the Min­istry of?Works) to alert cit­i­zens to the hole in the road. He said the Min­istry of Works, fit­ting­ly, re­leased a state­ment on the mat­ter short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Ram­roop said the ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tem con­cern­ing the hole was very good and most of his com­men­da­tion for this went, in large part, to the gen­er­al cit­i­zen­ry. "A lot of it (alert­ing peo­ple) came from the pub­lic...The first dri­ver who saw the hole might have called the Fire Ser­vice or some agency." Ram­roop said so­cial net­work­ing, through Face­book and Twit­ter, would have al­so helped cit­i­zens alert each oth­er. He said the ODPM had a na­tion­al re­sponse co-or­di­nat­ing func­tion and had to be the "brain" in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion that could de­vel­op in­to a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous one. The ODPM got a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $33 mil­lion this fis­cal year and $30 mil­lion for the last one. The ODPM's re­sponse to the hole in the road would de­pend on the alert phase, Ram­rooop said, adding that the ear­ly alert phase was so good, it re­sult­ed in no in­jury. He said the Min­istries of Na­tion­al?Se­cu­ri­ty, Trans­port and Works were re­spon­si­ble for cre­at­ing al­ter­na­tive routes for dri­vers in such a sit­u­a­tion, and the ODPM's role was to mon­i­tor the traf­fic changes for pos­si­ble con­ges­tion. He thought the au­thor­i­ties did an ex­cel­lent job, he said.