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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

$2.4b debt comes down...

Govt starts paying contractors

by

20160731

Gov­ern­ment has start­ed the process of pay­ing the $2.4 bil­lion debt owed to con­trac­tors says Works Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds, who spoke to the me­dia while tour­ing a work site on the Beetham High­way yes­ter­day, re­peat­ed Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion that all bills would be paid, once ver­i­fied.

"Not all the bills are ver­i­fied, we pay when we ver­i­fy. I can tell you from my own min­istry we have al­ready paid some of those con­trac­tors, so that fig­ure of $2.4 bil­lion may not be al­to­geth­er cor­rect at this time," Hinds said.

"Some of them have been paid by my own min­istry and as we speak, we con­tin­ue to ver­i­fy work and to pay."

Asked about the con­trac­tors' de­mands to have bills paid by the end of Au­gust, Hinds failed to ad­dress the is­sue specif­i­cal­ly but said the con­trac­tor for the Beetham project (JUSAM­CO) had no such is­sue.

"We make no se­cret of the fact that your gov­ern­ment is fac­ing a se­ri­ous cash flow is­sue. It is the rea­son why the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance found it nec­es­sary to go in­to our na­tion­al sav­ings, the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

"It is the rea­son why as we speak, he is on a road­show rais­ing bor­rowed mon­ey through the is­sue of bonds so that we can gain more cash in or­der to pro­vide for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T," Hinds said.

He in­sist­ed that the work, in terms of de­vel­op­ment was con­tin­u­ing.

"As you can see, the con­trac­tors are here this morn­ing so there is no prob­lem as far as they are con­cerned in re­la­tion to this job."

Yes­ter­day he vis­it­ed the site of a col­lapsed cul­vert on the Beetham High­way.

"We dis­cov­ered from a sur­vey that was done that all five cul­verts had be­come dys­func­tion­al. This one ac­tu­al­ly col­lapsed and there­fore was the most crit­i­cal of all so we have en­gaged a very ex­pe­ri­enced con­trac­tor in this coun­try, well known to all, to con­duct this very mas­sive project."

The cul­verts, which en­sure the flow of wa­ter from the road­way, were ini­tial­ly built in 1895, with the most re­cent re­pairs tak­ing place in 1953.

"They had done some work here and they used a sort of gal­vanised sheet­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of this cul­vert. That would have worn and rust­ed over time and ac­tu­al­ly col­lapsed, so it stops wa­ter from mov­ing."

Hinds said a lot of the stag­nat­ed wa­ter, po­ten­tial for Zi­ka, all the oth­er dis­eases and the liv­ing cir­cum­stances of the peo­ple in his own con­stituen­cy next door were ex­ac­er­bat­ed as a re­sult of the col­lapse.

There are five cul­verts on the stretch of high­way.

"This is just the first. We are work­ing on this side of the high­way (west­bound) we would have di­vert­ed the traf­fic to the east­bound lane. We did the ex­ca­va­tion and they are now about to put fresh con­crete cylin­ders which are ex­pect­ed to last for 50 to 100 years."

The first cul­vert will be com­plet­ed over the course of three week­ends, and re­sult­ed in tem­po­rary, slow-mov­ing traf­fic in both lanes.

"We don't want to dis­rupt the traf­fic flow dur­ing the course of the week, so to­day we have di­vert­ed some to PBR (Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route) and made a two lane on the east­bound. Next week­end we will re­verse the process."


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