Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says over­laden trucks be­long­ing to con­trac­tors the min­istry hires to re­pair the na­tion’s roads are caus­ing more dam­age to Gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture.

He made the com­ment at the open­ing of the new $3.2 mil­lion con­crete, drainage and road project at Up­per Laven­tille Road, Sou Sou Lands, Febeau Vil­lage, San Juan, yon Sat­ur­day.

Sinanan said, “We do have a prob­lem in T&T with huge trucks over­laden that are caus­ing more dam­age to our in­fra­struc­ture. In most cas­es, the trucks are owned by the same con­trac­tors that we have to pay to re­pair the road. I have a prob­lem with that,” Sinanan said.

“The Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty would have been work­ing to get some of these trucks on the weigh sta­tions. Most of these trucks are over the load lim­it by al­most 100 per cent. We’re will­ing to work with the con­trac­tors.”

He said this week the min­istry will call a meet­ing with con­trac­tors to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Sinanan re­count­ed an in­ci­dent last Wednes­day in­volv­ing a truck that was not over­loaded but breached its five-me­tre height lim­it with ma­te­r­i­al that dam­aged a bridge along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, dam­aged a pri­vate ve­hi­cle and left the dri­ver hos­pi­talised. He urged con­trac­tors and own­ers of large trucks to abide by the laws of the coun­try, adding if they didn’t they were de­stroy­ing in­fra­struc­ture and putting lives at risk.

Sinanan said the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties were not go­ing to ease up on en­force­ment of the law.

Re­gard­ing the $3.2 mil­lion cost of the Sous Sous Lands project, he said it was done by the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE). He said the min­istry now em­ploys a com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process and the ten­ders for the project saw bids from 14 con­trac­tors with a high of $6 mil­lion be­fore it was award­ed for $3.2 mil­lion to Kall Co Ltd. He said the con­trac­tor was able to de­liv­er a “per­fect job” with­in the time and bud­get.

Sinanan said the min­istry had been able to save tax­pay­ers hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars us­ing the new ten­der­ing process and be­tween 15 and 25 per cent on the project that took four and a half months.

St Ann’s East MP Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said when she went in­to that part of her con­stituen­cy in 2015, the first thing the res­i­dents men­tioned to her was the con­di­tion of their road. She said Sinanan kept his promise and de­liv­ered the new­ly-paved road for them and they were grate­ful. The road, she said, was such an im­por­tant thing in en­hanc­ing the qual­i­ty of life in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Com­mu­ni­ty head Cog­land Grif­fith said the road was called Laven­tille Road and be­gins from the Sad­dle Road and goes all the way down to Duke Street, Port-of-Spain. He said up to 1990 it was pos­si­ble to dri­ve down in­to Port-of-Spain be­fore flood­ing and poor in­fra­struc­ture made it im­pass­able in 1991.

Grif­fith said res­i­dents hope af­ter the ex­pen­di­ture by the min­istry the road can be ex­tend­ed right through to Mor­vant and in­to Port-of-Spain.

He said this will al­le­vi­ate and re­duce heavy traf­fic be­tween San­ta Cruz and Port-of-Spain and pro­vide an al­ter­nate route for com­muters.