Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is hop­ing that with­in two weeks, once the weath­er al­lows it, they will be­gin con­struc­tion of by­pass­es that will re­con­nect the Man­zanil­la to Ma­yaro road­way.

Two weeks ago the road was closed off af­ter heavy rain­fall and flood­wa­ters caused se­vere dam­age to the in­fra­struc­ture.

A light pole col­lapsed in­to one of the holes caused by the flood­ing, co­conut trees fell over elec­tric­i­ty lines, and large por­tions of the road were cracked open.

Thou­sands of peo­ple who use the road, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty and those who work in the oil in­dus­try, were af­fect­ed as they were forced to take al­ter­na­tive routes to get to Ma­yaro or parts of Man­zanil­la and San­gre Grande.

The road was closed pend­ing a struc­tur­al as­sess­ment by en­gi­neers of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor of the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE) Hay­den Phillip told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that there are 16 breach­es on the Man­zanil­la to Ma­yaro Road and that the min­istry in­tends to build by­pass­es to al­low the re­sump­tion of ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic on the road.

These by­pass­es, which will be built on the side of the road clos­er to the swamp, will be tem­po­rary un­til the min­istry does per­ma­nent re­pairs.

“We had flood­ing over ten kilo­me­tres of this road and the en­tire road is 26 kilo­me­tres. Over that ten kilo­me­tres, we have had 16 breach­es. What we are do­ing is prepar­ing de­signs and con­tract doc­u­ments.

“First­ly, we want to pro­vide con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the peo­ple. Where there are breach­es, we will build by-pass­es along the main road. In this way, peo­ple will be con­nect­ed to San­gre Grande and Ma­yaro.

By the end of this week, he said, “all de­signs will be com­plet­ed and we are hop­ing that by the fol­low­ing week, we should be on the ground start­ing work. If we fin­ish de­signs by the end of next week, maybe by the end of the fol­low­ing week we could have boots on the ground try­ing to re­store con­nec­tiv­i­ty.”

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a tour of the area by Min­istry of Works of­fi­cials.

When asked about the cost of the project, he de­clined to give a fig­ure say­ing that they are still in the ear­ly stages.

The cost to re­pair the last col­lapse on the Man­zanil­la to Ma­yaro Road was $30 to $40 mil­lion.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, who was al­so present, said that the whole idea of tem­po­rary by­pass­es was to cre­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty as soon as pos­si­ble.

“You clear the land, you put some mill ma­te­r­i­al and so on. This al­lows the re­turn to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy while you work on the per­ma­nent fix. That per­ma­nent fix will take some more time.”

He said that some of the breach­es are small and re­pairs could be done on them with­out the need for a by­pass.

Sinanan al­so spoke about the im­por­tance of that road­way be­ing re­opened to the pub­lic.

“The oil sec­tor in Ma­yaro is very im­por­tant. To get to Ma­yaro, peo­ple can use San­gre Grande or go through San Fer­nan­do. We have to make sure that the con­nec­tiv­i­ty to Ma­yaro is nev­er cut off. We have teams work­ing there to en­sure that the roads are in good con­di­tion. This Man­zanil­la to Ma­yaro Road is get­ting ur­gent at­ten­tion.”

Di­rec­tor of Drainage at the min­istry, Kather­ine Bad­loo Do­er­ga ex­plained that the road­way was flood­ed which led to parts of the road break­ing off.

“This was a re­sult of the wash­ing of the sand in ar­eas that were not prop­er­ly en­gi­neered. It con­tin­ued to break and we con­tin­ued to lose road­way. Now we have the PURE Unit try­ing to give as­sis­tance to re­store the road­way, how­ev­er, it will take time.

“We don’t want a re­peat that af­ter we fix the road it starts break­ing again.”

Prof Winston Suite

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Prof Suite: A dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen, we must get our bright­est minds to solve it

Prof Emer­i­tus Win­ston Suite, who lec­tured in the area of in­fra­struc­ture and de­vel­op­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), told the Sun­day Guardian that the Gov­ern­ment should take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the se­vere dam­age that was done not on­ly in Man­zanil­la but through­out the rest of the coun­try.

"It is ob­vi­ous that they did not do the rou­tine main­te­nance that should have been done every year in prepa­ra­tion for the rainy sea­son. Even when it was done, it was not enough. That ap­plies from Ma­yaro to Port-of-Spain. They may ar­gue that they did not have the mon­ey, but we see the con­se­quences."

He added that cli­mate change has al­so played a big part in the dam­age done, but ad­vised that the coun­try needs to be pre­pared.

Con­cern­ing the Man­zanil­la-Ma­yaro sit­u­a­tion, he said, "There is a study the Works Min­istry has done about coastal pro­tec­tion. I get the im­pres­sion they did the work but did not im­ple­ment it. There is go­ing to be a need for the re­pair of re­tain­ing walls and the con­struc­tion of re­tain­ing walls in oth­er ar­eas. We will have to raise the road paving in some ar­eas. This is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. We must get our bright­est minds to­geth­er to solve it."