Works and Infrastructure Minister Jack Warner said it would cost $110 million to repair roads in Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar's constituency. As a result, he said, the project to rehabilitate the entire Penal Rock Road from Penal Junction to Basseterre, Moruga, would be split into three phases. However, due to the suspension of the Programme for Upgrading Road Efficiency (PURE), residents would have to settle for road patches until the matter was resolved. he said. Warner and officials from his ministry, including permanent secretary Cheryl Blackman and director of PURE Hayden Phillip, visited the area yesterday afternoon.
After a second day of fiery protests and blockades, the minister was able to bring some calm by promising to have remedial works done on the road from as early as next week. He said: "What we were able to do was to convince them that since last October we had done a budget for that road up to Basse Terre, Moruga. "To fix that road, its costing $110 million. We told them that we plan to do it in phases because we cannot spend that kind of money in one fiscal year and they agreed. "We left them there, convinced that we are concerned about their welfare.
"For me this is credit to them because they were not angry, they were not bitter, they just wanted somebody to come and see them. And they were quite happy that was done." Warner said the PURE Unit had made his ministry and the country proud with the work they had done. He said until the matter was resolved, he had no authority to assign the engineers to any projects. Warner said though engineers were leaving the programme, he was convinced the matter would be resolved "favourably and amicably" in the coming days.