Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Re­lief has come to east­ern Trinidad as the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port opened by­pass roads along col­lapsed sec­tions of the Man­zanil­la Main Road yes­ter­day af­ter they were dec­i­mat­ed by ma­jor flood­ing on No­vem­ber 26.

The road is the main artery for hun­dreds of dai­ly com­muters tra­vers­ing be­tween San­gre Grande and Man­zanil­la to the north and Ma­yaro to the south. Since the col­lapse, mo­torists wish­ing to trav­el be­tween the ar­eas were forced to de­tour through Plum Mi­tan. It was a jour­ney that was hours long, cost com­muters con­sid­er­ably more in trans­porta­tion costs and af­fect­ed al­most every part of life in the re­gion.

"The al­ter­na­tive route through Plum Road, Plum Mi­tan, Biche to Rio Claro,  that's a long trek to Ma­yaro. It's three hours and es­pe­cial­ly for school chil­dren and more so in the health sec­tor. It took an am­bu­lance three hours from Ma­yaro to go via that Biche area to go San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal," Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir said.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said the col­lapsed road de­bil­i­tat­ed many com­mu­ni­ty busi­ness­es since the in­ci­dent.

"Eighty per cent of our tourism de­pends on sup­port from north Trinidad. This is the link from north Trinidad to Ma­yaro. Com­mu­ni­ties of Ker­na­ham, Or­toire were sole­ly, sole­ly de­pen­dent on this traf­fic way," he said.

It's why they both of­fered thanks to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the con­trac­tors for re­unit­ing their com­mu­ni­ties. Dr Rag­bir al­so com­mend­ed the con­trac­tors for hir­ing peo­ple with­in the com­mu­ni­ty to work on the project.

"They hired peo­ple whose in­dus­try no longer ex­ist­ed like the roast fish peo­ple, like the fish­er fold, peo­ple with the crab in­dus­try, and again I com­pli­ment both of the con­trac­tors," he said.

Mem­bers of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic al­so shared their ela­tion over the re­con­nec­tion while Guardian Me­dia was on the site yes­ter­day.

Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan greets occupants of a vehicle driving along the bypass road in Manzanilla.

ANISTO ALVES

The tem­po­rary roads

Al­though it has been de­scribed as a tem­po­rary road, it is not one sin­gu­lar road­way that runs par­al­lel to the en­tire orig­i­nal Man­zanil­la Road. It is, in fact, a se­ries of short­er roads that run along the west­ern side of the Man­zanil­la Road con­nect­ing the sec­tions that are still us­able.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan, it cost tax­pay­ers $12 mil­lion and was done by two con­trac­tors, Kall Co Ltd and Na­mal­co. He said al­though the area was flood­ed on No­vem­ber 26, work could not be­gin un­til al­most two weeks lat­er when the wa­ters re­ced­ed. How­ev­er, he said it was com­plet­ed in time for the new aca­d­e­m­ic term.

He said con­trac­tors will re­main on site, even through the con­struc­tion of the sub­stan­tive road­way, to en­sure ac­cess is main­tained through­out. Sinanan said there are no re­stric­tions on the class­es and types of ve­hi­cles al­lowed on the tem­po­rary road.  

Ex­er­cise cau­tion

Act­ing Chief En­gi­neer Adande Pig­got is urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­er­cise cau­tion while tra­vers­ing the new­ly opened by­pass roads.

"This is a tem­po­rary ac­cess road­way which means that the geom­e­try and stuff may not be per­fect and un­til we fi­nalise the road­way, so we rec­om­mend that speeds be re­duced along this cor­ri­dor here," he said.

He said the speed lim­it would be re­duced from 65 kilo­me­tres per hour and the nec­es­sary signs will be put up. For those trav­el­ling at night over the next few days, ex­tra cau­tion will be need­ed as the street lights have not yet been turned around to il­lu­mi­nate the ac­cess road. Pig­got said they are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with T&TEC to have that done this week.

De­signs un­der way for per­ma­nent road

Sinanan said de­signs are un­der way for the per­ma­nent road and hopes it will be com­plet­ed by next month.

"We are hop­ing to have that com­plet­ed by the end of Jan­u­ary/first week in Feb­ru­ary where we can go out then for prop­er ten­der," he said.

He said they in­tend to di­vide the project in­to six seg­ments to have the road as close to com­ple­tion as pos­si­ble "be­fore the next rainy sea­son."

The Man­zanil­la Road col­lapsed on at least two oc­ca­sions due to flood­ing in re­cent times, last year and back in 2014. Sinanan said they in­tend for the per­ma­nent road re­con­struc­tion to be done in a way to avoid a re­peat of these in­ci­dents but ac­knowl­edged it will be a chal­lenge.

"You have the Nar­i­va Swamp on one side, and then you have the ocean on the oth­er side. We have start­ed to do some work with the coastal di­vi­sion in the last four years, so we do have a lot of stud­ies. We ac­tu­al­ly start­ed some coastal work three years ago high­er up, and you'd see those ar­eas stood up well," he said.

"We are work­ing with all the agen­cies at the min­istry; the drainage di­vi­sion, the coastal di­vi­sion, the high­ways di­vi­sion and we are al­so work­ing with the IMA (In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs) and we are work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. We have a lot of in­for­ma­tion on the area and the de­signs will take all this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion."