Ali­cia Llanos

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says equip­ment to start dredg­ing the coun­try's wa­ter­ways will ar­rive in two weeks.

He was speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter tour­ing Bam­boo Set­tle­ment 2. Warn­er went there to hear the con­cerns of res­i­dents who have been com­plain­ing about se­vere flood­ing and bad drainage in the area. At last Thurs­day's post Cab­i­net news brief­ing Warn­er an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved a $30 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to dredge ma­jor wa­ter­ways and drains to re­duce flood­ing. The ini­tia­tive in­clud­ed the dredg­ing of main wa­ter­ways that run off in­to the Gulf of Paria. He said, "I have been ad­vised in two weeks they will be bring­ing equip­ment from up the is­lands."

Warn­er said the equip­ment was be­ing pro­vid­ed by a Dutch firm. He ex­plained be­cause of the amount of waste and the depths at which the riv­er mouths need­ed to be dredged, spe­cial equip­ment must be used and was un­avail­able lo­cal­ly. When asked how con­tracts were award­ed to con­trac­tors hired to take part in the dredg­ing projects, Warn­er said con­tracts would be giv­en se­lec­tive­ly based on whether or not the con­trac­tor had the nec­es­sary equip­ment. He said no con­tracts had been giv­en yet, but they would be giv­en to con­trac­tors who had equip­ment to han­dle the job with­in bud­get.

Warn­er said once the equip­ment had ar­rived it was es­ti­mat­ed that dredg­ing work would take be­tween two to three months. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the flood­ing ex­pert meant to be called in to help the min­istry with flood­ing so­lu­tions, Warn­er said un­for­tu­nate­ly the se­lect­ed ex­pert Dr Emery Mil­let had fall­en ill and was un­able to do the job. Warn­er said to ad­dress the traf­fic, lo­cal traf­fic ex­pert Dr Rae Fuller had been giv­en 30 days to de­vise a plan to ease traf­fic in Diego Mar­tin, En­ter­prise and oth­er con­gest­ed ar­eas.