Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

By the time Car­ni­val comes around there will be bet­ter roads across T&T, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi promised yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter, who spoke with re­porters on Tues­day night at Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, where road paving was tak­ing place, said his min­istry is work­ing with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and sev­er­al oth­er en­ti­ties to de­liv­er mass road re­pairs. He said their main fo­cus will be ma­jor roads and high-im­pact ar­eas.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, the city of Port-of-Spain has an up­com­ing event, just like the city of Ch­agua­nas, if you call it that, and if we deal with the city of San Fer­nan­do and Ari­ma, the bor­oughs, Point Fortin, we’re look­ing at do­ing ma­jor works. We have the Car­ni­val sea­son up­on us, we want to make sure that main thor­ough­fares are treat­ed with,” he said.

Al-Rawi said the bud­get for the project is near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars, which is fund­ed by cit­i­zens when they pay for gas.

“The Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme for the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment this year is $386 mil­lion What does that equal to? Every­body knows that every­body felt it when the price of fu­el at the pump in­creased. Sev­en­ty per cent of that in­crease in cost...came to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. So, if you’re pay­ing more at the pump, sev­en­ty per cent of that mon­ey came to us. Our mis­sion is to spend the near $400 mil­lion on road re­pairs, main­te­nance, and the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme,” he said.

When asked about ac­count­abil­i­ty for the re­pairs if the work is not com­plet­ed in a sat­is­fac­to­ry man­ner, Al-Rawi said the min­istry will be doc­u­ment­ing the de­tails and plans to be as trans­par­ent with the pub­lic as they can be.

He said the min­istry is work­ing on an app that will al­low cit­i­zens to re­port is­sues in their com­mu­ni­ties. He said the main pur­pose is to gath­er as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble by de­ter­min­ing the cor­rect lo­ca­tion of the is­sue and ac­count­ing for the ex­pens­es to do re­pairs.

Ma­jor of Port-of-Spain Joel Mar­tinez ex­pressed his thanks for the work. He said he hopes pub­lic util­i­ties such as the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty do not ru­in the re­cent­ly paved roads to con­duct their own re­pairs.

Last No­vem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley promised mass road works across the coun­try as soon as the dry sea­son start­ed. Over the past few weeks, the Min­istries of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Works have been con­duct­ing road re­pairs in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.