Heads of var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions around the coun­try are hop­ing that the re­cent­ly an­nounced Sec­ondary Road and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny will pro­vide enough funds to their ar­eas to en­sure the prop­er main­te­nance of roads in their dis­tricts.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, dur­ing last Fri­day’s Spot­light on the Econ­o­my, re­it­er­at­ed the gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­vest sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­to the com­pa­ny in the up­com­ing bud­get, which is set to be read on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 26.

“It’s called the Sec­ondary Roads Com­pa­ny, it’s be­ing as­signed to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. In fact, in this year’s bud­get, we have an ap­pro­pri­a­tion of $100 mil­lion for that com­pa­ny. There will be sub­stan­tial­ly more in the 2023 bud­get go­ing for­ward for that spe­cif­ic pur­pose be­cause I think we all recog­nise that while we were fo­cus­ing on res­cu­ing the econ­o­my and mak­ing sure the pop­u­la­tion was safe there were some things that could not have got­ten the at­ten­tion that per­haps should have, but go­ing for­ward there would be a sig­nif­i­cant fo­cus on road re­pair and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the fund­ing of those par­tic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties,” said Min­is­ter Im­bert at the Hy­att in re­sponse to ques­tion about the al­lo­ca­tions for road re­pairs.

The state of pub­lic road­ways have be­come a ma­jor ral­ly­ing point for many around the coun­try, as cit­i­zens lament the state of roads na­tion­wide.

But even while it is a com­mon cry, some com­mu­ni­ties feel more ne­glect­ed than oth­ers.

Ray­mond Co­zi­er, chair­man of Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion not­ed that in the past few years, the cor­po­ra­tion had sig­nif­i­cant­ly less fund­ing than re­quired for the up­keep and main­te­nance of roads in the area.

As a re­sult, the area has been known for sev­er­al hor­ren­dous roads, with the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro road of­ten la­belled as one of the worst in the coun­try.

He is hope­ful that the new com­pa­ny will give the cor­po­ra­tion a fair al­lo­ca­tion that will help them have more than ad­e­quate roads.

“We were giv­en an al­lo­ca­tion of $200,000 for the main­te­nance of roads and traces. We got a sup­ple­ment re­lease mid-year of $450,000 so in to­tal, we re­ceived $650,000. Our bud­get­ed fig­ure for main­te­nance of all those roads and traces is $19 mil­lion. So we didn’t re­ceive $1 mil­lion, so it is be­yond the wildest imag­i­na­tion for our abil­i­ty to main­tain our roads and traces. The amount of land­slips and de­pres­sion, so our re­gion is re­al­ly se­vere­ly ne­glect­ed. So we are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to this new move by the Gov­ern­ment that they re­al­ly treat Ma­yaro-Rio Claro with the jus­tice, and the fair­ness that is need­ed,” said Co­zi­er.

He felt the area should get more than its due, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en its con­nec­tion to the oil and gas sec­tor.

“It is very un­fair to the res­i­dents of our re­gion in that a great amount of the wealth (in the coun­try) is be­cause of the re­sources in our re­gion. It comes from our re­gion, in the last 100 years, oil and gas com­ing out of our re­gion and it is just fair that some of these re­sources be giv­en back to our re­gion. And at present, our roads are in ter­ri­ble, de­plorable con­di­tions,” said Co­zi­er, “The fact that our area is heav­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for the wealth and re­sources that the coun­try is de­pend­ing on and the coun­try is us­ing and it on­ly fair and jus­ti­fi­able that our re­gion ben­e­fits at least from some of those re­sources and enough that is eq­ui­table for us to en­joy some de­cent road con­di­tions.”

Port of Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez could not pro­vide a fig­ure for the cost of road re­pairs in the City but sim­i­lar­ly won­dered how the al­lo­ca­tions would be dis­trib­uted to the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions giv­en the vary­ing sizes and pop­u­la­tions all over the coun­try. Us­ing the ini­tial al­lo­ca­tion to the com­pa­ny as a base, the May­or not­ed there would have to be al­lo­ca­tions ad­just­ed to the needs of each cor­po­ra­tion.

“So if it’s $100m, that’s to be di­vid­ed by 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, that’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7 mil­lion per re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion,” said Mar­tinez, who added,” but some re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are larg­er than oth­ers, they have dif­fer­ent land­scapes and pop­u­la­tions.”

The May­or said he would have to wait to see how the new com­pa­ny would work be­fore mak­ing any fur­ther state­ments on the al­lo­ca­tions.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s com­ments at the Spot­light event fol­lowed Prime Min­is­ter, Dr. Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment a few weeks ear­li­er dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Bel­mont.

Back then the Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted the state of the na­tion’s roads had suf­fered due to the gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on the health sec­tor dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Dur­ing 2020 and 2021 we spent the mon­ey keep­ing you alive and there was not suf­fi­cient mon­ey to spend on road re­pairs. We made that call be­cause as far as we’re con­cerned spend­ing the mon­ey keep­ing you alive dur­ing the pan­dem­ic was more im­por­tant. On­ly re­cent­ly the Cab­i­net ap­proved the for­ma­tion of a road re­pair com­pa­ny specif­i­cal­ly in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. That com­pa­ny is be­ing op­er­a­tionalised now. A Board has been ap­point­ed, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will make the mon­ey avail­able, they are go­ing to mo­bilise the con­trac­tors small, medi­um and what­ev­er and we are go­ing to go out oth­er there and re­in­state our roads. Our roads will not re­main sub­stan­dard for­ev­er. It was a ques­tion of pri­or­i­ties,” Dr. Row­ley said dur­ing that meet­ing.

That point was re-em­pha­sised by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter last Fri­day, as he as­sured that al­lo­ca­tion for road re­pairs would go up.

“Now that we have bro­ken the back of the health cri­sis. Now that the econ­o­my is re­cov­er­ing, cer­tain­ly, there will be sub­stan­tial al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get to­wards road re­pair and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. The PM would have al­so men­tioned the es­tab­lish­ment of a new com­pa­ny, specif­i­cal­ly to deal with lo­cal roads, neigh­bour­hood roads and sec­ondary roads, and so on,” said Im­bert.

The new Com­pa­ny, was first men­tioned in May, fol­low­ing the mid-year bud­get re­view, and some de­tails were dis­cussed dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee to dis­cuss the $3 bil­lion vari­a­tions to the bud­get.

It was first re­vealed then that the com­pa­ny would fall un­der the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, spear­head­ed by Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi.

Pri­or to the es­tab­lish­ment of the com­pa­ny sec­ondary road works were the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of three or­gan­i­sa­tions–the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and the Pro­gramme of Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) un­der the Min­istry of Works.

Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme in 2021, about $736.2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to be in­vest­ed in the roads and bridges in­fra­struc­ture through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go while the Road Con­struc­tion/Ma­jor Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme ex­e­cut­ed by the PURE Unit used $74.9 mil­lion for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of sev­er­al sec­tions of road­ways across Trinidad.

In last year’s bud­get de­bate, Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan said $40 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to re­pair sec­ondary, mi­nor, agri­cul­tur­al and forestry ac­cess roads across the coun­try.

The re­duc­tion in the amount of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed was sig­nif­i­cant com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic fig­ures.

Fund­ing for the Road Con­struc­tion/Ma­jor Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Project had de­clined by 42 per­cent ($130 mil­lion to $75 mil­lion) from the fis­cal year 2019 to the fis­cal year 2021, while fund­ing for the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions for lo­cal gov­ern­ment roads and bridges de­clined by 20 per­cent dur­ing that same pe­ri­od drop­ping from $77 mil­lion to $61.5 mil­lion.