KEVON FELMINE

While protests for road re­pairs have been a fea­ture of 2024, the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to ini­ti­ate 100 new sec­ondary road-paving projects in fis­cal 2025.

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert de­liv­ered the 2025 Bud­get to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, he said the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) had ini­ti­at­ed over 150 road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $233 mil­lion on sec­ondary roads for fis­cal 2024.

Of these projects, 85 are com­plete, 30 are sched­uled to com­mence in the first quar­ter of fis­cal 2025, and 35 are near the ten­der stage and will be award­ed short­ly.

"In con­tin­u­ing to im­prove the in­fra­struc­ture of the coun­try's road net­work, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port will ini­ti­ate in 2025, 100 new road-paving projects on lo­cal roads at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $210 mil­lion. The projects will be un­der­tak­en in all ar­eas of Trinidad," Im­bert said.

He said that while MOWT en­gaged 25 small con­trac­tors to sup­ple­ment and en­hance road patch­ing and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, it in­tends to in­crease this num­ber to 50 in fis­cal 2025 to in­crease cov­er­age.  De­spite floods wreak­ing hav­oc on some com­mu­ni­ties, Im­bert said MOWT un­der­took over 600 de­silt­ing and riv­er-clear­ing projects na­tion­wide.

"These ini­tia­tives aimed to pro­tect wa­ter­way ero­sion and im­prove drainage through­out the coun­try. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry's pumps and gates pro­gramme fur­ther strength­ened flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts."

MOWT un­der­took a land­slip re­pair pro­gramme, bridge con­struc­tion and re­fur­bish­ment en­deav­ours, strate­gic traf­fic man­age­ment pro­to­cols, road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and paving ini­tia­tives, and man­hole restora­tion ef­forts. Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment plans to pur­sue a na­tion­wide in­fra­struc­ture re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion in 2025, pri­ori­tis­ing slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion mea­sures, mit­i­ga­tion and ame­lio­ra­tion of traf­fic con­ges­tion, the re­con­struc­tion and re­pair of bridges, and up­grades to coastal in­fra­struc­ture. These in­clude coastal re­pair works on the Paria Main Road, im­proved ac­cess to Mar­aval, the con­struc­tion of the Moru­ga High­way and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Moru­ga Road, up­grades to the Barataria ramp and un­der­pass, the South­ern Main Road, Curepe, and the Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma.

Re­gard­ing ma­jor works, Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to mod­ernising in­fra­struc­ture. He an­nounced that the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to San­gre Grande is near­ing com­ple­tion, with the 1.7 km con­nec­tor to the East­ern Main Road, San­gre Grande, an­tic­i­pat­ed by April 2025. 

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter added that the Archibald-DeLeon High­way is al­ready ful­ly op­er­a­tional, with just a few re­main­ing el­e­ments to be com­plet­ed. Up­on com­ple­tion, he said it will sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween Point Fortin and oth­er south­ern towns, stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic growth in the re­gion.

Mean­while, the $177 mil­lion Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road re­con­struc­tion is in an ad­vanced state, with a tar­get­ed com­ple­tion date for all phas­es of this project by the end of Jan­u­ary 2025. 

The Gov­ern­ment ex­pects the $57.5 mil­lion Omera Road up­grades com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber.