Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A bit­ter feud is brew­ing be­tween a con­trac­tor and sev­er­al busi­ness­es at a Ma­yaro mall over the con­struc­tion of a 200-me­tre con­crete box drain. The con­struc­tion start­ed in Sep­tem­ber, but four months lat­er, mall own­er Shar­ma Per­sad said the project was not even halfway com­plete.

Per­sad al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the way the drain was be­ing built on the Guayagua­yare Road, Ma­yaro. Point­ing to cracks in front of his mall, Per­sad said he was fear­ful the en­tire struc­ture would col­lapse. He said there were ten busi­ness­es in the mall and hun­dreds of peo­ple re­lied on it for goods and ser­vices.

Per­sad said the project con­tract was award­ed to A&L Sup­port Ser­vices of Mafek­ing Vil­lage, Ma­yaro, since 2011 and the drain con­struc­tion was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed with­in a month. Yes­ter­day he sent a le­gal let­ter to the con­trac­tor for loss of earn­ings caused by the project.

"We are fed up. They were sup­posed to do ex­ca­va­tion and rerout­ing of the drain but it is tak­ing too long and it's not up to stan­dard. The con­trac­tor's work­ers are here from 8.30 am to 3 pm, but we think there is suf­fi­cient light­ing for them to work through­out the night," Per­sad said. He said the en­tire front of the mall was in­ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of the con­struc­tion work.

"We need to have this project com­plet­ed as soon as pos­si­ble, be­cause we are los­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars," Per­sad added. While he ad­mit­ted the drain was nec­es­sary to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing in the area, Per­sad ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the qual­i­ty of work. He point­ed to the con­crete re­in­force­ment mesh and said that it was not up to stan­dard.

His daugh­ter Suni­ta said ten­ants could not pay their month­ly rent be­cause of a sharp de­cline in prof­its over the fes­tive sea­son.

Con­trac­tor re­sponds

In­ter­viewed yes­ter­day, own­er of A&L Sup­port Ser­vices Bri­an Fran­cis promised to have the drain com­plet­ed with­in a month. He said he could not di­vulge de­tails of his con­tract but de­nied it had gone be­yond the al­lot­ted time. Fran­cis said the ini­tial de­sign of the drain was up­grad­ed by the min­istry and fur­ther time was al­lot­ted. He al­so said bad weath­er had af­fect­ed the job.

Fran­cis al­so claimed Per­sad had en­croached on the gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty by build­ing a car park over the drain. "This is why we have to now dig up the car park to build the drain un­der­ground," Fran­cis said. He said the drain was be­ing built ac­cord­ing to spec­i­fi­ca­tions from the Min­istry of Works.