Local Government Minister Dr Suruj Rambachan says the Government has spent more than $3 billion on 1,832 road upgrade projects under the Programme for Upgrading Roads Efficiency (Pure) since taking office in 2010.He said it was the constant road upgrades over the past four years that depleted the supply of bitumen and led to the current shortage.
On Thursday, Minister of Energy Kevin Ramnarine said a shutdown at the Petrotrin refinery meant that the bitumen could not be processed, leading to the shortage.Meanwhile, Rambachan and head of Pure Hayden Phillip gave conflicting reports on what the bitumen shortage meant for ongoing road works.In separate telephone interviews on Friday, Rambachan said there would be no cost or budget overruns or delays in the delivery of paving jobs, while Phillip said the work would "of course be affected."
Rambachan said state-owned Lake Asphalt had already ordered the product from a Barbados-based company and another private contractor was also bringing in a shipment from Jamaica in order to complete roadworks already started. Lake Asphalt, Rambachan said, was also mandated to continue importing bitumen on a weekly basis until the Petrotrin facility, which produces the paving product, resumed operations.
"It is a temporary situation," he said.He said major paving projects like the billion-dollar Point Fortin highway produced its own paving product and as such would not be delayed. He could not say why that same production facility did not provide the bitumen needed instead of it being imported.
"There are two main projects that could be affected, one on the Eastern Main Road being done by Coosal's, but they are doing a base coating until the shipment arrives in the country. The other is near Bon Aventure, but that would be regulated by September 9 when the shipment is in the country," he said.But Phillip had a different perspective.
"It will affect all jobs in the process of closing off and the best person to answer when that will be rectified would be the Ministry of Energy because it's a question for Petrotrin," Phillip said."We are just waiting and hoping it is resolved soon."/Phillip said at the end of the fiscal year, all jobs were closing off and as such a lot of work was being done.
"The East/West Corridor will be most affected because there are two sites already milled and cannot be paved until the imported stock arrives," he said.Phillip said this was the first time that he had witnessed any sort of bitumen shortage."We have had issues where there were limited amounts and only a few selected contractors would be able to purchase. But where nobody getting any? Never experienced that," he said.