RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The re­port in­to the par­tial col­lapse of the South Trunk Road which cost tax­pay­ers $280 mil­lion is due this week says Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan.

An ex­panse of the crum­bling revet­ment wall at Mos­qui­to Creek has been dis­man­tled even as Sinanan awaits the re­port.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sun­day, Sinanan con­firmed that works are on­go­ing at the site.

He said he was ex­pect­ing to get a re­port pend­ing the com­ple­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tions this week.

“Once I get the re­port, we will is­sue a state­ment to the me­dia,” Sinanan said.

Told that the wall had been dis­man­tled, Sinanan said, “Yes, work is go­ing on apace. Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion will be giv­en af­ter I get the re­port this week.”

Sinanan said an ex­panse of 180 me­tres of paved road­way had col­lapsed in­to the sea, along with parts of the revet­ment sea­wall.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of T&T (APEC) has called on the Min­istry to do a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the col­lapse and to make the find­ings known to the en­gi­neer­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

Apec’s hon­orary sec­re­tary en­gi­neer Richard Akong al­so said giv­en the na­ture of the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment there, the col­lapse may not be the re­sult of failed en­gi­neer­ing de­signs.

“The na­ture and ex­tent of the cur­rent road­way fail­ure may well be an un­fore­seen phe­nom­e­non re­sult­ing from in­creas­ing­ly chang­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions in­flu­enc­ing ex­ist­ing com­plex ge­o­log­i­cal and there­fore ge­ot­ech­ni­cal chal­lenges,” he said.

He added, “Giv­en the unique phys­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions of the cur­rent road­way cou­pled with its sta­tus as a high­ly ac­tive con­struc­tion zone with heavy ma­chin­ery, a fail­ure of this na­ture is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a fail­ure of en­gi­neer­ing de­sign, man­age­ment or con­struc­tion method­ol­o­gy. How­ev­er, the facts can on­ly be known when a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­tak­en.”

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion group Ed­ward Mood­ie has ac­cused con­sul­tants and the con­trac­tor of block­ing the flow of wa­ter be­tween the swamp and the Gulf of Paria which has af­fect­ed valu­able spawn­ing grounds.

The sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud has al­so con­demned the works say­ing build­ing in man­groves or on the edge of wet­lands was ill-ad­vised.

The Mos­qui­to Creek was said to be the most tech­ni­cal as­pect of the high­way.

Since the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy high­way project un­der the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, dis­cus­sions were held as to whether a cause­way should be built with­in the man­groves or whether the road should be widened. OAS Con­struc­tura failed to com­plete the road ex­ten­sion along the Creek.

In June 2018, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it will di­vide the project in­to pack­ages to boost com­pe­ti­tion among lo­cal con­trac­tors and so dri­ve down prices.

Af­ter eval­u­a­tion Jusam­co Pavers, al­so known as Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors won the con­tract to up­grade 2.4 km of the north­bound and south­bound car­riage­way, with a re­vised fi­nal bid of $280,976,489.08 VAT in­clu­sive.