Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John has de­fend­ed a $33 mil­lion re­duc­tion in fund­ing for con­tract­ed high­way works in the 2027 Bud­get com­pared with the orig­i­nal 2026 al­lo­ca­tion, say­ing the min­istry can con­tain costs by us­ing its own work­ers.

“No­body can say we are miss­ing in ac­tion. We’ve been do­ing a lot of work,” John said dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s ex­am­i­na­tion of Bud­get 2027.

Her de­fence fol­lowed re­peat­ed Op­po­si­tion ques­tions about whether the min­istry could ad­e­quate­ly re­pair roads, patch pot­holes and ad­dress land­slips with re­duced fund­ing, lim­it­ed sup­plies and an age­ing ve­hi­cle fleet.

The High­ways Di­vi­sion has been al­lo­cat­ed $47 mil­lion for “Oth­er Con­tract­ed Ser­vices” in 2027, com­pared with an orig­i­nal al­lo­ca­tion of $80 mil­lion in 2026. That is a re­duc­tion of $33 mil­lion, or 41.25 per cent. How­ev­er, the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion is about $504,000 more than the re­vised 2026 es­ti­mate of $46.5 mil­lion.

John said the item cov­ers land­slip re­pairs, slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion, drainage works, ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, cross­ing re­con­struc­tion, traf­fic man­age­ment, guardrail in­stal­la­tion and as­phaltic ma­te­ri­als for road patch­ing.

Asked why the orig­i­nal 2026 al­lo­ca­tion had been re­duced, she said the min­istry was in­creas­ing­ly re­ly­ing on its em­ploy­ees.

“A lot of it is be­cause we are do­ing quite a lot of the work in-house, so we don’t have a markup,” she said.

John cit­ed a cross­ing re­pair for which a ten­der had ex­ceed­ed $3 mil­lion, say­ing min­istry staff had com­plet­ed the work suc­cess­ful­ly.

“The staff of the min­istry did this piece of work splen­did­ly,” she said.

She al­so point­ed to work at Las Lo­mas, de­scrib­ing it as tech­ni­cal­ly chal­leng­ing and prais­ing the em­ploy­ees in­volved.

“These are high­ly skilled, high­ly trained peo­ple, very en­thu­si­as­tic peo­ple,” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion ques­tioned whether the ex­pla­na­tion matched the re­sources avail­able.

“Can you ex­plain, there­fore, why the al­lo­ca­tion for ma­te­ri­als and sup­plies, which is what your in-house work­ers would use, was just about $1 mil­lion?” Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert asked.

Im­bert lat­er iden­ti­fied the pre­cise 2027 pro­vi­sion for high­ways ma­te­ri­als and sup­plies as $1.5 mil­lion.

John main­tained that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing was avail­able else­where.

“We have an item which you’ll find even­tu­al­ly in the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund for $15 mil­lion,” she said.

Op­po­si­tion MPs al­so ques­tioned whether the min­istry’s ve­hi­cles and equip­ment could sup­port the ad­di­tion­al work.

“With your old, bro­ken-down fleet, your mi­nus­cule al­lo­ca­tion for ma­te­ri­als and sup­plies, you be­lieve you can re­place this $34 mil­lion that you were not giv­en by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance?” Im­bert asked.

John ac­knowl­edged that some ve­hi­cles were more than 20 or 30 years old. She said the min­istry was work­ing to im­prove its ca­pac­i­ty to re­pair them and ob­tain spare parts, and that fund­ing would al­so al­low it to pur­chase some re­place­ment ve­hi­cles.

Asked again whether she was sat­is­fied with the re­duced pro­vi­sion, John point­ed to projects com­plet­ed the pre­vi­ous year.

“Be­cause last year, we spent $44 mil­lion with 48 projects, and I can stand up here all day now, if you wish, and I can call out all of the projects,” she said.

She cit­ed land­slip re­pairs, road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions among the works un­der­tak­en.

“We’ve been patch­ing every­where,” John added.

She said col­lab­o­ra­tion with WASA was help­ing to ad­dress tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult road fail­ures, which re­quired more time and in­ter­ven­tion.

“To­geth­er, we are get­ting these things un­der con­trol,” she said.

John al­so point­ed to ef­forts to re­store the Agua San­ta plant, say­ing it was close to be­com­ing op­er­a­tional.

“So that will help us to re­duce ex­pen­di­ture,” she said, main­tain­ing that the min­istry had com­plet­ed sub­stan­tial work de­spite its fi­nan­cial con­straints.