The T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion and the As­phalt Pavers As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day called on the Gov­ern­ment to "ex­pe­di­tious­ly restart PURE in its ar­tic­u­lat­ed en­hanced form to con­tin­ue to cre­ate some mea­sures of eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty in this area."The state­ment was signed by Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mervyn Chin and As­phalt Pavers As­so­ci­a­tion chair­man Dave Aqui.They said the sud­den re­duc­tion of projects un­der the pro­gramme had re­sult­ed in an "at­ten­dant fall-off in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty by our mem­bers."

The state­ment added: "This trans­lates to hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of plant, equip­ment and raw ma­te­ri­als be­ing idle."They said the sit­u­a­tion with re­spect to PURE was caus­ing con­cern to mem­bers of the two as­so­ci­a­tions."The rip­ple ef­fect to those de­pen­dent on this seg­ment of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try for em­ploy­ment and eco­nom­ic sur­vival and their many de­pen­dants are ex­treme­ly fright­en­ing as we ap­proach the Christ­mas sea­son," they added.