Ralph Ban­warie

A video cir­cu­lat­ing on Face­book shows cracks and ero­sion near the new­ly opened Guaico Road ex­it of the Elmi­na Clarke-Allen High­way, a 7-kilo­me­tre stretch that con­nects Cu­mu­to to San­gre Grande. The footage has raised con­cerns among res­i­dents, but an en­gi­neer in­volved in the project says the is­sues are tem­po­rary and part of on­go­ing work.

The video, post­ed in the San­gre Grande Com­mu­ni­ty Group, fea­tures a man walk­ing along the road and point­ing to the dam­age af­ter sev­er­al days of heavy rain. The man, who does not show his face, says:

“Lewwe take a look at the sur­round­ings. Af­ter we had some heavy down­pours, now the rainy sea­son now start. Look at this. Ero­sion, and watch how close it is to the new road­way. Now I walk­ing here and I lit­er­al­ly sink­ing in this, eh. Check it out. We talk­ing about rainy sea­son now start. Watch how close it is to the road. Watch for your­self. All them cracks you see in there, that’s the road lit­er­al­ly break­ing apart there right now. All this go­ing and wash­ing down in­side here.”

The man claims the cracks and ero­sion show a “to­tal fail­ure” of the project.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site and spoke to an en­gi­neer who de­clined to be named or in­ter­viewed on cam­era. They ex­plained that the ero­sion on­ly af­fects drains and not the main car­riage­way, as the erod­ed ar­eas are far from the road. “This was done in haste to open the road, but it will be fixed. Com­plaints should on­ly come when the fi­nal work is com­plet­ed.”

On Fri­day, work­ers were seen build­ing a dri­ve­way to pro­vide ac­cess to res­i­dents across the Guaico Road con­nec­tion.

The en­gi­neer said the is­sues were the re­sult of a tem­po­rary align­ment cre­at­ed to open the road while con­struc­tion con­tin­ues. They ex­plained the per­ma­nent road will even­tu­al­ly con­nect the Main Road to Rail­way Road, with that phase of work ex­pect­ed to start soon.

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port has not yet is­sued a for­mal re­sponse.