Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Res­i­dents of Ram­bert Vil­lage, La Ro­maine, breathed a sigh of re­lief as the long await­ed $.9 mil­lion Her­mitage Com­mu­ni­ty Bridge was of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned on Wednes­day.Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture and MP for the area Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine said the new two-way bridge will al­le­vi­ate flood­ing and re­duce ac­ci­dents.She ex­plained that the old di­lap­i­dat­ed one-lane struc­ture was prone to flood­ing in the rainy sea­son and had been blamed as the cause of nu­mer­ous ac­ci­dents.

While the bridge was com­plet­ed with­in bud­get, Roop­nar­ine said it ex­ceed­ed its De­cem­ber dead­line, at­tribut­ing the de­lay to the bad weath­er and chal­lenges with un­der­ground WASA mains.She thanked res­i­dents for their pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing dur­ing the con­struc­tion phas­es."Be­cause of the on­go­ing works, sev­er­al busi­ness­es suf­fered, how­ev­er, the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ued to give their full co-op­er­a­tion and sup­port."

Roop­nar­ine said the struc­ture was built us­ing ca­bles en­cased in con­crete, which could with­stand the pres­sures of heavy ve­hi­cles us­ing this busy thor­ough­fare."This is the first bridge in the coun­try to be built with this tech­nol­o­gy. The con­trac­tors used post ten­sion­ing to strength­en the struc­ture."

She said this tech­nol­o­gy will be used to con­struct 62 more bridges, in part­ner­ship with the Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (PSAEL). While the de­signs for 25 of these bridges have al­ready been com­plet­ed, Roop­nar­ine said giv­en bud­getary con­straints, they will build as many as they are able to. "When you see con­struc­tion be­gin on a struc­ture that is on­ly half of the work," she said. "A lot goes on be­hind the scenes, like the de­sign­ing and ten­der­ing process­es."

Res­i­dents who at­tend­ed the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny wel­comed the pedes­tri­an walk­way, built along­side the bridge, say­ing this will pro­vide an el­e­ment of safe­ty for their chil­dren."We wait­ed so long for this bridge, the old one was re­al­ly un­sta­ble. To­day is a great day for our com­mu­ni­ty," one res­i­dent said.