The Friend­ship Con­nec­tor Road De­vel­op­ment Project, which has faced con­tro­ver­sy and crit­i­cism for its lack of trans­paren­cy and con­sul­ta­tion, is on track to be com­plet­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary 31 and mid-Feb­ru­ary.

The $70 mil­lion project in­cludes the con­struc­tion of a 2.5-kilo­me­tre, flex­i­ble-pave­ment, sin­gle-car­riage­way road; grad­ing, bridge con­struc­tion and cul­vert drain in­stal­la­tion in its first phase.

Ear­li­er in the project, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) filed a court case against the de­vel­op­ment, cit­ing the lack of nec­es­sary ap­provals from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). In June, a High Court grant­ed the EMA an in­junc­tion to halt the road con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, the in­junc­tion was lift­ed af­ter the THA ob­tained the re­quired ap­provals from the EMA.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said that the road would pro­vide al­ter­na­tive routes for com­muters in To­ba­go West, re­duc­ing con­ges­tion on the main road.

“The road­way will al­so lead to a con­nec­tion out to Shir­van Road. But what we’ll do ini­tial­ly is that we are run­ning the route all the way down. We have a bridge prac­ti­cal­ly com­plet­ed, we lit­er­al­ly lay­ing the sur­face and look­ing to en­sure we have the road paved by the end of the month of Jan­u­ary. The con­nec­tion to Shir­van lights will hap­pen sub­se­quent­ly.

“We will place the traf­fic light at Shir­van (Road) with a round­about so what will hap­pen es­sen­tial­ly, is if you’re com­ing from North, if you’re com­ing from Ply­mouth area, com­ing from that side, you can just go. It would ease traf­fic sig­nif­i­cant­ly and it means that when there is Car­ni­val in Crown Point, peo­ple will still have ac­cess to the air­port,” Au­gus­tine ex­plained.

Amidst on­go­ing con­cerns about out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to con­trac­tors, he as­sured that the THA is com­mit­ted to re­solv­ing the is­sue.

A foren­sic au­dit, di­vid­ed in­to three phas­es, is cur­rent­ly un­der­way to as­sess the pay­ments owed. The first phase has been com­plet­ed, with par­tial pay­ments made to con­trac­tors. The sec­ond phase is near­ing com­ple­tion, with fur­ther pay­ments to fol­low.

How­ev­er, due to the large sum owed, Au­gus­tine said pay­ments will spread across mul­ti­ple fis­cal years to en­sure the com­ple­tion of new projects.