De­spite heavy rain­fall and short­ages of bi­tu­men, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan ex­pects that the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion will be com­plet­ed by mid-2023.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a tour of the Gand­hi Vil­lage Round­about on Tues­day, Sinanan said 40 per cent of what was ear­marked to be com­plet­ed this year could not be com­plet­ed be­cause of heavy rain­fall.

“The in­for­ma­tion that I have at this time is that the high­way will be com­plet­ed next year. You must recog­nise we had a two-year COVID shut­down and al­so this year we had a very ear­ly rainy sea­son so the amount of work that was sup­posed to go in­to the high­way this year was de­layed,” he ex­plained.

Sinanan re­vealed that por­ing works were on­go­ing by the var­i­ous con­trac­tors who have been en­gaged in con­struc­tion.

“Last week, I was down there when they cast the last ma­jor pore on the high­way. There’s one oth­er pore and then that will com­plete most of the ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture work. Af­ter that, it will just be some earth­works and some paving on the last seg­ment,” he added.

Ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the project will fi­nal­ly be com­plet­ed, Sinanan said: “I can see the high­way com­plet­ing next year pro­vid­ing that we get good weath­er, I would say maybe the mid­dle of next year, that’s where we’re tar­get­ing now but again, that de­pends on the weath­er con­di­tion.”

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that the high­way was pro­ceed­ing as planned.

“I see re­al­ly no hic­cups go­ing for­ward pro­vid­ed we get the good weath­er,” he added.

The de­ci­sion to build the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was in the mak­ing for over 30 years. The Na­tion­al Phys­i­cal De­vel­op­ment Plan of 1984 in­clud­ed an align­ment for such a high­way, in­clu­sive of the de­vel­op­ment of Mos­qui­to Creek. In 1998, a pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty study was done. A full fea­si­bil­i­ty study and ini­tial de­signs were done by LEA-Trin­to­plan and Eco­engi­neer­ing be­tween 2005 to 2007.

That fi­nal re­port in­di­cat­ed the 1998 study out­lined the need for a more di­rect route be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin-La Brea. It high­light­ed traf­fic de­lays on sec­tions of SS Erin Road from Cross Cross­ing to Siparia, as well as traf­fic de­lays on the two-lane sec­tion of South Trunk Road and South­ern Main Road, be­tween Cross Cross­ings and St Mary’s Junc­tion.

AE­COM and Hal­crow were con­sul­tants on the project and were in charge of en­gi­neer­ing de­signs. OAS Con­struc­to­ra was the main con­trac­tor but in late 2015, NID­CO ac­cused OAS of aban­don­ing the project. It then can­celled the con­tract, which has cost the State al­most $1 bil­lion. In June 2018, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it will di­vide the project in­to pack­ages to boost com­pe­ti­tion among lo­cal con­trac­tors and dri­ve down prices. Twelve work pack­ages were ten­dered by the Gov­ern­ment in De­cem­ber 2020.

Last Au­gust, NID­CO an­nounced the high­way will be com­plet­ed by mid to late 2022. How­ev­er, that date was not re­alised.