Jesse Ramdeo

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says he was not hap­py about the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween his min­istry and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) in re­la­tion to re­pair works that led to hours of traf­fic grid­lock through­out west Trinidad over the last two days and well in­to last night.

Ac­cord­ing to Sinanan, while the emer­gency re­pair work near the Peake’s Ser­vice Sta­tion was nec­es­sary, the im­pact on res­i­dents and mo­torists in that part of the coun­try on the East­er week­end was re­gret­table.

The traf­fic dis­rup­tion came af­ter WASA crews were forced to con­duct emer­gency re­pairs on a rup­tured 16-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline near the Peakes Ser­vice Sta­tion, near the end of the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, start­ing on Wednes­day evening.

With the road­way head­ing west closed off dur­ing the work, the traf­fic grid­lock ex­tend­ed in­to near­by ar­eas such as Wood­brook, Mu­cu­rapo and St James, af­ter mo­torists along the west­bound lane of the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way had to be di­vert­ed away from the fore­shore.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with strand­ed mo­torists yes­ter­day af­ter­noon who all ex­pressed their frus­tra­tion over be­ing stuck in the traf­fic.

“We’ve been here for over an hour and we haven’t moved any­where. Works like this, it needs to be done in the night,” one an­gry dri­ver said.

One mo­torist ex­plained that she was forced to make al­ter­nate arrange­ments to have her chil­dren picked up be­cause of the traf­fic jam.

Fish ven­dors in Co­corite al­so lament­ed the length of time to com­plete the works.

“Traf­fic whole morn­ing, is time for it to move by now, I can’t even be­gin to talk about the loss­es as a re­sult of this traf­fic con­ges­tion,” a fish ven­dor at the near­by Co­c­ocrite Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty said.

Speak­ing at a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice ve­hi­cle han­dover cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Sinanan said the pub­lic should have been giv­en time­ly no­tices of im­pend­ing dis­rup­tions to avoid the type of in­con­ve­nience caused by the re­pair work.

“There was some lev­el of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I think when the work ac­tu­al­ly start­ed, the min­istry was not in­formed of the mag­ni­tude of the work. How­ev­er, once we found out about it, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment at the min­istry stepped in, the traf­fic man­age­ment di­vi­sion stepped in,” Sinanan said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think it is a sit­u­a­tion WASA could have helped. I think go­ing for­ward, we have to com­mu­ni­cate in a much more quick fash­ion.”

Up un­til last night, ma­jor traf­fic grid­lock was still re­port­ed head­ing in­to the west, as works were still be­ing com­plet­ed af­ter WASA crews failed to meet sev­er­al dead­lines to com­plete the work it had giv­en ear­li­er in the day.

How­ev­er, WASA ex­plained that the re­pair works were hin­dered af­ter work­men en­coun­tered high volt­age elec­tric­i­ty lines close to the rup­tured pipeline. This ren­dered them un­able to use the heavy equip­ment that would have speed­ed up the process.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Min­is­ter Sinanan al­so said WASA’s age­ing in­fra­struc­ture con­tin­ued to pose ob­sta­cles for the pub­lic in sev­er­al ways.

“It is un­for­tu­nate with what hap­pened there and it is a chal­lenge based on age­ing in­fra­struc­ture. It is one of the chal­lenges we face when we do work in the city, you go in think­ing that it is one line or two lines and then you bounce up things that you didn’t re­alise was there,” he said.

Sinanan as­sured that ef­forts would be made to im­prove com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co­or­di­na­tion be­tween agen­cies go­ing for­ward.

Late last night, WASA con­firmed that while the emer­gency re­pair works had been com­plet­ed, works to re­store the road­way would take ad­di­tion­al time. It said that work was to be com­plet­ed by 8 pm but mo­torists re­port­ed no change in the grid­lock.

“Mo­torists are asked to con­tin­ue to pro­ceed with cau­tion and to obey the in­struc­tions of the Traf­fic Con­trol Of­fi­cers on du­ty, as fi­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the site is com­plet­ed,” WASA said, al­so apol­o­gis­ing for the in­con­ve­nience.