The Ministry of Works and Transport identified some 500 various road projects to be tackled in an “aggressive” repair programme for this year of which it has completed 50 per cent of those in the first phase.
The revelation came from Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan in a live interview on CNC3 news last night.
Sinanan said this was expected to be completed by the end of March before engaging in the next phase of 250 projects.
“We’re trying to target at least 500 projects in this financial year, which I said includes all aspects of the infrastructure programme,” he said.
He said that Carnival festivities hampered the eagerly anticipated programme which began in January.
“The reason for that is simple. What we’re doing is not repaving the road. We’re milling the roads and once you mill the roads, there’s a process you have to go through. What we did not want to happen, and I can give you an example, say the Western Main Road. That was earmarked for paving two weeks before Carnival. However, when you look at the WASA infrastructure, we recognised we had several WASA leaks and once we mill the road we’d have to give WASA about a week to repair it.
“So what we did not want to do is the week leading up to Carnival we have several roads which would have been milled, but we can’t pave them. So we slowed the programme down one week before Carnival, this week the contractors are mobilising again, and you’d see a ramping up of that by early next week over this weekend,” he said.
Benefiting from the programme, he said, were roads across the country and all the contractors under a “competitive tendering basis.”
“All our main roads that need paving will be done on a programme that is geared towards rehabilitating all the roads that need rehabilitating in the country once the funding is available to us,” he said.
He said the Ministry of Works and Transport was capitalising on the dry season for these works. Once completed, he hopes to return to the Minister of Finance by the mid-year budget review for additional funding “once the Minister of Finance has that money available for us.”
He added that the ministry is also pushing its drain clearing and desilting programme with 500 projects already identified and an additional 75 under major river and watercourse rehabilitation.
“Both programmes are on track as we speak. If you look around the country, you will see the drainage programme continued throughout the Carnival season. We didn’t stop on that because that is work being done on the watercourse and so on,” he said.
