KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Tech­ni­cal staff from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port are eval­u­at­ing a dam­aged por­tion of the M1 Tasker Road in Princes Town, which col­lapsed over the week­end.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan was ex­pect­ing a re­port on the is­sue yes­ter­day evening to de­ter­mine when re­pairs would start and fin­ish.

Sinanan said so far, it ap­peared the is­sue was the re­sult of a failed cul­vert.

The M1 Tasker Road is one of the main thor­ough­fares used by mo­torists and com­muters be­tween San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons to Princes Town, Table­land, Rio Claro and Ma­yaro. How­ev­er, the road, which pass­es through the old sug­ar­cane es­tate, was af­fect­ed by sev­er­al floods in re­cent weeks, leav­ing the ground sat­u­rat­ed.

The min­istry placed bar­ri­ers at an area along the road and stat­ed in a pub­lic no­tice that there was a tem­po­rary clo­sure from the 4 km mark un­til fur­ther no­tice.

It stat­ed that heavy flood­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with tor­ren­tial rain­fall had caused dam­age to a drainage struc­ture.

“Due to the con­cern for the safe­ty of road users and the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the road­way, it has be­come nec­es­sary to close the road. The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is pur­su­ing emer­gency re­con­struc­tion of the cul­vert cross­ing with an aim of com­plet­ing works with­in two weeks.”

The min­istry ad­vised mo­torists to use the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road and Man­a­ham­bre Road as al­ter­na­tive routes un­til the prob­lem is ad­dressed.