With regard to road maintenance and repair, I can concur completely with what Mr Walters wrote in the letter headlined, Tobago road infrastructure deplorable. I live in San Fernando.
A motley crew of individuals (I'm not going to call them workers) came to repair a roadside drain in my area. This roadside drain is about 140 feet long.
For over two weeks an assortment of people tried to manhandle, with a variety of tools, the concrete that was there, and remove it.
These people, for the few hours daily that they were there, were painful to watch. Clearly only one or two were actually working, the others merely paid lip service. And loud lip service it was!
Eventually a backhoe was called in. This backhoe cleared the entire drain in a little over two hours. Why it wasn't used in the beginning I'll never know.
Then a truck came and deposited the sand and gravel needed to make the new drain. This truck had a terrible oil leak.
Every turn it made on the road is clearly marked out by the oil stains. For a month, boxing was made, cement was mixed in the road, and eventually the drain was completed. The project took about seven weeks altogether.
This roadside drain functioned very well before it was taken out.
All that really needed repairing was one corner which had been destroyed by too many trucks driving over it.
Yes, it had a few cracks, but it worked. What we are left with is a new drain, a filthy street, cement and gravel in the grass verges and holes in the road next to the drain.
I shouldn't complain. There is a small box drain at the side of the road on the La Romain side of the Massy traffic light junction.
This drain has been abandoned mid-construction. There are pieces of rebar sticking up out of the blocks. It has been in this state for years!
There seems to be an ad hoc mentality towards maintenance and construction. These things need to be planned and maintained on a regular basis.
AM