Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John, vis­it­ed sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties across the Cou­va North con­stituen­cy on Tues­day as part of tar­get­ed ef­forts to ad­dress long-stand­ing in­fra­struc­ture and drainage con­cerns af­fect­ing res­i­dents.

John was joined by se­nior of­fi­cials and tech­ni­cal ex­perts from the Drainage and High­ways Di­vi­sions, along with the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Unit.

At Per­se­ver­ance Road, the team as­sessed on­go­ing drainage chal­lenges where John spoke di­rect­ly with res­i­dents, where short and long-term drainage in­ter­ven­tions were dis­cussed.

The vis­it con­tin­ued to Kleinsworth Road, where, de­spite ju­ris­dic­tion­al bound­aries, the Min­istry re­viewed the site due to se­vere drainage is­sues af­fect­ing near­by com­mu­ni­ties. Fo­cus was al­so placed on two crit­i­cal pieces of in­fra­struc­ture:

- Roops­ingh Bridge, which is in ur­gent need of re­con­struc­tion to en­hance road safe­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

- Randy Carter Bridge, a vi­tal link for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, which col­lapsed pre­vi­ous­ly, is now ear­marked for full re­con­struc­tion to re­store ac­cess and sup­port liveli­hoods.

John in­tends to con­tin­ue to vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try to de­vel­op a roadmap that al­lows for mean­ing­ful in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.