Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

* Hard­ware sell­ing "Road Res­cue As­phalt Re­pair” prod­uct

* Says one bag can fix pot­holes sev­en me­tres squared

* Works Min­istry ad­vis­es cit­i­zens not to fix pot­holes on their own

* Promis­es tech­ni­cal help un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances

Com­mu­ni­ties fed-up with poor road con­di­tions may be able do the re­pairs them­selves if they are pre­pared to pur­chase a new prod­uct on the mar­ket and get ap­proval from the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agency.

Lo­cal hard­ware John­ny Q is of­fer­ing its “Road Res­cue As­phalt Re­pair” prod­uct which it said can per­ma­nent­ly re­pair holes in as­phalt and con­crete.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan told the Busi­ness Guardian that while his min­istry is will­ing to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to those want­i­ng to fix pot­holes, he warned cit­i­zens must first get per­mis­sion from the au­thor­i­ties.

“Any one wish­ing to ad­dress a pot­hole should ob­tain ap­proval from the rel­e­vant agency; be it the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion or the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture,” Sinanan said.

He ex­plained that more harm than good may be done if peo­ple took mat­ters in­to their own hands to fix roads.

“If ad­dressed in the wrong way it can dam­age the road­way,” the Min­is­ter said.

On the oth­er hand, if a pri­vate en­ti­ty is de­sirous of fix­ing an area, the min­istry gen­er­al­ly is will­ing to pro­vide tech­ni­cal in­put, once it is an area un­der its ju­ris­dic­tion, Sinanan said.

Re­gard­ing the prod­uct it­self, the Works Min­is­ter said en­gi­neers would have to re­view to as­cer­tain its suit­abil­i­ty.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian in May, Sinanan said his min­istry was not at fault for the poor state of the coun­try’s roads, not­ing that the prob­lems lie with WASA and lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies.

The is­sue, he ex­plained, stems from a dis­con­nect be­tween the main­te­nance and re­pair of the roads.

It is wide­ly be­lieved his min­istry is re­spon­si­ble for the up­keep of roads all across the coun­try, but the min­is­ter stressed his re­mit re­mained with ma­jor road ar­ter­ies such as the var­i­ous high­ways and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

The re­main­der of the roads Sinanan said are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies or re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“The big chal­lenge with pot­holes in Trinidad, I would say is num­ber one is WASA, and two a ma­jor part of the cir­cle is re­al­ly the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, to get their peo­ple on board to start to work. We have ac­tu­al­ly reached out to them to give them the ma­te­r­i­al free of charge. The min­istry will buy the ma­te­r­i­al, they will put their teams in, but again we were try­ing to get them on board with that, we were re­al­ly not too suc­cess­ful in get­ting them on board. But we will con­tin­ue to push on for that,” Sinanan had said.

Ac­cord­ing to the John­ny Q’s site, Road Res­cue As­phalt Re­pair is avail­able at $290 per bag and weighs 50 lbs.

One bag is sup­posed to re­pair a site sev­en square feet and is re­port­ed­ly “mined and used by state, mil­i­tary, and in­dus­tri­al lead­ers” and has ze­ro VOC (volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds, com­mon­ly re­ferred to paints, paint strip­pers and oth­er sol­vents and con­sid­ered to be among the largest sources of in­door volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds.

Road Res­cue As­phalt Re­pair is al­so said to be nat­ur­al as­phalt and processed in the USA, ac­cord­ing to the site.

Fur­ther, the prod­uct promis­es not to stain or ru­in clothes, “un­like oily man­u­fac­tured as­phalts,” and it can be in­stalled dur­ing “any weath­er and at any tem­per­a­ture; wet, dry, hot, or cold.”

Fur­ther, there’s no spe­cial tools are re­quired.

“It is dry to the touch; has no ad­di­tives, glues, or binders and it’s sim­ply a five-minute ap­pli­ca­tion. Just sweep, fill, and dri­ve,” the site added.

Christo­pher Joseph, se­nior su­per­vi­sor for the John­ny Q Di­vi­sion at Ari­api­ta Av­enue, de­scribed the prod­uct as “as­phalt base; ba­si­cal­ly like pitch.

“So, it will last a long while. But is al­so de­pends on the amount of traf­fic go­ing on at the area,” Joseph said.

And since it was first in­tro­duced to the mar­ket two weeks ago, Joseph said the re­sponse has been quite good.

“When cus­tomers come in and they see the prod­uct they have been pur­chas­ing it. Or when they go on our site they would call to see it we have it and they come to pur­chase it,” Joseph said, adding that there have al­so been nu­mer­ous calls from peo­ple en­quir­ing about the item.

And based on this re­sponse he said it could per­haps mean that peo­ple maybe seek­ing to do road re­pairs in their com­mu­ni­ties them­selves.

But is Road Res­cue As­phalt Re­pair tru­ly vi­able?

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh said while it can be used for pot­holes, it how­ev­er, will bring on­ly tem­po­rary re­lief as this de­pends on the depth and size of the hole.

“Some of the prob­lems of the roads are not nec­es­sar­i­ly sur­face is­sues. There may be a base or an un­der­ly­ing con­di­tion like a wa­ter leak and there­fore, the base may need strength­en­ing which will re­quire more than as­phalt.

“Hence, as­phalt is re­al­ly part of the ap­pli­ca­tion. If you sim­ply put as­phalt it may fail. There’s more to it when it comes to re­pair­ing a pot­hole,” Ma­habirs­ingh ex­plained.

He said as­phalt sur­fac­ing on mi­nor roads takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion two to three inch­es but some­times pot­holes may even be deep­er.

“In that case ag­gre­gate base im­prove­ment has to be done first and then put as­phalt on it,” he added.

But Ma­habirs­ingh agreed that the prod­uct is con­ve­nient as it al­lows the av­er­age home-own­er the ease of hav­ing “as­phalt in a bag.”

“If home­own­ers need a spot re­pair for their dri­ve­way for in­stance, this item can be pur­chased off the shelf and ap­plied by any non-craft or non-tech­ni­cal per­son. For do­mes­tic re­pairs it is in­no­v­a­tive,” Ma­habirs­ingh said as he de­scribed the prod­uct as a “do-it-your­self re­pair mea­sure.”

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to for­mer di­rec­tor of High­ways for the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Roger Ganesh who said he used a sim­i­lar prod­uct and could vouch for its ef­fec­tive­ness in cer­tain in­stances.

“I’m fa­mil­iar with such prod­ucts, how­ev­er, make sure it’s not made in Chi­na. It’s ide­al for small jobs and does not re­quires man­u­al labour and com­paction equip­ment but small hand tools,” Ganesh said.

But he said the price is a draw­back as it’s too cost­ly.

“A very good prod­uct. I use to buy it from an agent here years ago but that price too ex­pen­sive,” he said.

On whether it could be used to fix pot­holes he ex­plained that there are some lim­i­ta­tions.

“It’s good enough for small to medi­um depth pot holes on­ly, not the craters on some of our roads. Deep­er holes re­quire a com­bi­na­tion crush stone first and then the as­phalt about two inch­es min­i­mum,” he added.