Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says the gov­ern­ment "got licks" over its fail­ure to re­pair roads but he is as­sur­ing that $450 mil­lion is now avail­able to re­pair sec­ondary roads across the coun­try. 

Al­ready re­pairs have start­ed along Pluck Road, San Fran­cique where the en­tire road col­lapsed re­cent­ly, cut­ting off ac­cess be­tween San Fran­cique and Siparia.  

Near 96 km along Chatham Road in Ce­dros, the road has al­so caved bad­ly cre­at­ing sin­gle-lane traf­fic.  

Ma­jor slip­pages have al­so been iden­ti­fied along Cochrane Vil­lage, Guapo; St Julien Road, Princes Town; Moru­ga Road near Cachipe, Gran Chemin and Rock Riv­er; Pa­pourie Road, Up­per Bar­rack­pore; Hillview Road, Clax­ton Bay and Lengua Road, Re­al­ize Road and St Croix Road, Princes Town. The South­ern Main Road, head­ing to Ica­cos is al­so in dire need of re­pairs as the area near the Great La­goon is sink­ing. 

But speak­ing at the open­ing of the San Fer­nan­do Walkover on Wednes­day night, Min­is­ter Sinanan said road­works will con­tin­ue now that $200 mil­lion has been in­ject­ed in­to the Sec­ondary Road and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny (SR­RC). 

He said road re­pair was a pri­or­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment, not­ing that 300 road projects were com­plet­ed this year. 

Asked which roads will be pri­or­i­tized for re­pairs now that there was an ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion of funds, Sinanan said: " The Min­is­ter doesn’t de­cide which road is pri­or­i­tized, there is a sys­tem for that and we use da­ta." 

He added: " Yes, we got a lot of licks on the con­di­tion of the road. Based on the al­lo­ca­tion we got we did 300 road projects. This year we will as­sess the lo­ca­tions and the tech­ni­cal team will de­ter­mine which roads will be fixed." 

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi un­der whose purview the SR­RC falls de­fend­ed the poor main­te­nance of the na­tion's roads. 

"We are now com­ing off the back of Covid with a $13 to $14 bil­lion deficit. We could not at­tend to roads in the man­ner of sec­ondary roads be­fore now. We are ag­gre­gat­ing the da­ta. Its com­bi­na­tion ef­fort in terms of in­fo flow­ing from the Min­istry of Works, Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, PURE and the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions," Al-Rawi said. 

He al­so ex­plained that the PURE Unit had ac­cess to #250 mil­lion to be used to pave roads. 

"The PURE al­lo­ca­tion by the way of off-bud­get bor­row­ing is $250 mil­lion in ad­di­tion to monies al­lo­cat­ed there. So there is a sig­nif­i­cant pool of mon­ey now to fix roads," Al Rawi said. 

He said the pan­dem­ic as well as de­clines in gov­ern­ment rev­enue af­fect­ed road re­pairs. 

"Dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic and when we had a 96 per cent loss in oil and gas rev­enue in 2016, we put salaries be­fore road im­prove­ments but now that we have cap­i­tal in tow, all we can say is that it is our pri­or­i­ty that at­ten­tion is giv­en to our roads in a fair and eq­ui­table fash­ion," Al-Rawi said. 

The es­tab­lish­ment of the SR­RC has been con­demned by the Op­po­si­tion. Cur­rent­ly, sec­ondary road works are han­dled by three or­gan­i­sa­tions–the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and PURE which falls un­der the Min­istry of Works. 

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the SR­RC was a du­pli­ca­tion of ser­vices and will be an av­enue for cor­rup­tion.