Gail Alexan­der

Phys­i­cal cap­i­tal work on cer­tain drainage projects start in the 2023 dry sea­son and the high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin is tar­get­ed for com­ple­tion in mid 2023.

And a fi­nal re­port on the col­lapse of the Mos­qui­to Creek seg­ment of the high­way is ex­pect­ed in a cou­ple weeks.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­firmed this at Mon­day’s meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on the 2023 Bud­get

Sinanan was ques­tioned by UNC MPs Roodal Mooni­lal, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Dave Tan­coo, Rush­ton Paray, Van­dana Mo­hit, David Lee, Kadi­jah Ameen, Ravi Rati­ram and Sad­dam Ho­sein on is­sues.

Sinanan said he was aware the main ar­eas of con­cern are road and drainage works and the past month had demon­strat­ed the con­tin­ued im­pact on weath­er pat­terns, lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Sinanan added, “The min­istry has tak­en the po­si­tion of purs­ing an ag­gres­sive main­te­nance and up­grade pro­gramme while work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to ac­cel­er­ate scope in­fra­struc­ture in­ter­ven­tions which has to cater for one in 100 year events as against one in 12- year events as may have been the case pre­vi­ous­ly.”

He said in 2022 the min­istry did 400-plus drainage projects.

He added that in some in­stances, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the Drainage Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan, rescop­ing and giv­en the ear­ly start to the rainy sea­son, would have seen the start of cer­tain projects in the rainy sea­son.

“To en­sure prop­er im­ple­men­ta­tion where this has oc­curred phys­i­cal cap­i­tal work has been sched­uled for the start of the 2023 dry sea­son,” he said.

The min­istry has done 115 high­way projects. Its 2023 pri­or­i­ty projects in­clud­ed road up­grades, up­grade of pumps/gate in­ven­to­ry, con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of its coastal pro­gramme, Port-of-Spain, East West cor­ri­dor trans­porta­tion projects with the Ma­coya Ex­change, ex­ten­sion of Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Point Fortin High­way, Grand Chemin Fish­ing Port and Diego Mar­tin pedes­tri­an bridge.

In­dars­ingh de­mand­ed fix­ing to be done in 24 hours of the “largest pot­hole in T&T’ in his area. He said teams have on­ly come and looked, but noth­ing was done.

Sinanan as­sured a team would be sent yes­ter­day (Mon­day) ,”Don’t wor­ry, I know you’re a favourite in that area—I won’t have them laugh at you.” he said.

Sinanan said there was a $91 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for road main­te­nance while repaving is done by con­trac­tors with small­er con­trac­tors for lo­calised re­pairs. Un­der­ground clean­ing has in­creased.

On Mooni­lal’s query about the col­lapse of the Mos­qui­to Creek High­way seg­ment, Sinanan said Nid­co’s ob­tained a pre­lim­i­nary re­port and is now eval­u­at­ing it and ex­pects to send the fi­nal re­port to the min­istry in the next cou­ple weeks. A pre­lim­i­nary re­port has al­ready been sent to the min­istry.

Sinanan said Gov­ern­ment had to be very care­ful of the process in re­veal­ing the re­port in case it had to take le­gal ac­tion against any­body .

“Once the of­fi­cial re­port is hand­ed to the min­istry, we’ll take it to Cab­i­net and with Cab­i­net’s ap­proval it will be made pub­lic pro­vid­ed it doesn’t dis­ad­van­tage any­one with whom le­gal ac­tion has to be tak­en if the re­port says that.”

Not­ing high­way de­signs be­gan in 2012, Sinanan added steps will be tak­en to en­sure cit­i­zens were not dis­en­fran­chised and any­one who had to be held ac­count­able would be.