Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment spends more than half a mil­lion dol­lars re­pair­ing roads every day.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT), more than $512 mil­lion was spent on 287 road re­pair and im­prove­ment projects. On av­er­age, that works out to around $602,350 a day.

The in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian by the MOWT in re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest made in Jan­u­ary.

It re­veals the fol­low­ing:

• Of the 287 road re­pair and im­prove­ment projects be­tween 2021 and April 2023, there were 232 for road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, in­clu­sive of cul­vert re­con­struc­tion, con­crete, drainage, strength­en­ing, paving, tem­po­rary di­ver­sions and emer­gency works. More than $235.1 mil­lion was spent on the 232 projects in that cat­e­go­ry. Each of them, on av­er­age, cost the state ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.01 mil­lion.

• Six bridge re­con­struc­tion and con­struc­tion projects cost $26.2 mil­lion—ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4.3 mil­lion per project on av­er­age.

• 34 slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion projects cost $77.4 mil­lion—ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.3 mil­lion per project on av­er­age.

• 15 projects list­ed as traf­fic man­age­ment or road im­prove­ment mea­sures re­lat­ed to the ex­pan­sion of ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture to en­hance road ca­pac­i­ty/ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and to im­prove the safe­ty of mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans, in­clu­sive of road milling, paving, paint­ing, con­struc­tion of me­di­ans, erec­tion of signs and gang­ways, cost $155.9 mil­lion.

• Dur­ing that time, the MOWT spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4.7 bil­lion and an­oth­er $2.47 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for fis­cal 2023.

Ex­pen­di­ture on road re­pair and road im­prove­ment projects dur­ing the pe­ri­od ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 per cent of the min­istry’s ex­pen­di­ture. Com­par­a­tive­ly, in the same pe­ri­od, sig­nif­i­cant­ly more mon­ey was spent on per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture ($1 bil­lion) and con­tract em­ploy­ment ($148 mil­lion)—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 per cent of the min­istry’s bud­get.

An­oth­er $1.02 bil­lion (18 per cent) was spent on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for trans­fer to the Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice, VM­COTT, Na­tion­al He­li­copters Lim­it­ed, Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, Port Au­thor­i­ty, the Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion, and the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty.

In fis­cal 2021 and 2022, cit­i­zens paid $465.87 mil­lion in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax­es and du­ties to the MOWT’s Trans­port Di­vi­sion, $11 bil­lion in in­come tax was paid to the state by in­di­vid­u­als, while non-oil com­pa­nies paid more than $16.7 bil­lion in tax­es.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2021 and May 11 2023, 62 fixed penal­ty tick­ets were is­sued for goods ve­hi­cle car­ry­ing ex­cess weight. Trans­porta­tion en­gi­neers and civ­il en­gi­neers, in­clud­ing re­tired UWI Se­nior Lec­tur­er in Trans­porta­tion En­gi­neer­ing Dr Trevor Townsend, have said that over­weight ve­hi­cles cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to roads. In jus­ti­fy­ing an in­crease in fines for over­weight trucks from $750 to $8,000 in his 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert said that in­fra­struc­ture dam­age sus­tained by over­weight trucks con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor con­cern.

“One le­gal truck caus­es the same amount of dam­age to a road as ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,600 cars. How­ev­er, one truck over­loaded by over 20 per cent could cause the same amount of dam­age as 19,000 cars. A truck over­loaded by 100 per cent could cause the same dam­age as 18 le­gal trucks,” Im­bert said.

Poor qual­i­ty ma­te­r­i­al

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil Fazir Khan said the qual­i­ty of ma­te­ri­als be­ing used in some re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects is poor, re­sult­ing in quick de­te­ri­o­ra­tion when the road is sub­ject­ed to even nor­mal traf­fic load­ing.

“This is es­pe­cial­ly ev­i­dent in cen­tral and south Trinidad where some PURE projects utilise what is known in the in­dus­try as Guaracara boul­ders/stones to re­pair roads. This ma­te­r­i­al is very weak com­pared to crushed blue lime­stone, for ex­am­ple, (which comes from the North­ern Range quar­ries) and sim­ply crush­es un­der nor­mal wheel load­ing from ap­proved truck traf­fic.

When ex­pen­sive hot-mix as­phalt is laid on top of this poor ma­te­r­i­al, or any poor base and sub­base ma­te­r­i­al, we are ef­fec­tive­ly throw­ing away pub­lic funds for the sake of ex­pe­di­en­cy,” he said.

Khan, a civ­il en­gi­neer, said a lot of the prob­lems with the state of the roads are tied to main­tain­ing the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture, which is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of WASA, rather than the MOWT.

“This is one of the biggest prob­lems that needs ad­dress­ing as WASA can­not ac­count for 50 per cent of the wa­ter that they pro­duce. I sus­pect that at least 40 per cent is lost un­der the roads as the util­i­ty com­pa­nies share the road right of ways with the high­ways di­vi­sion. If WASA can fix their leaks prop­er­ly, we will sud­den­ly have bet­ter roads,” he said.

Khan said an­oth­er crit­i­cal fac­tor in ex­tend­ing the life of the coun­try’s road net­work is clean­ing and main­tain­ing road­side drainage in­fra­struc­ture on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis. He be­lieves it is es­sen­tial that main­te­nance of the coun­try’s road in­fra­struc­ture be un­der­stood as main­tain­ing the coun­try’s road and drainage in­fra­struc­ture.

Not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of roads are flex­i­ble pave­ments with a hot-rolled as­phaltic sur­face lay­er on top of a crushed blue met­al base on top of an ag­gre­gate sub­base course, he ex­plained: “If there is no drainage in­fra­struc­ture, or the lat­ter is poor­ly con­struct­ed, or not ad­e­quate­ly main­tained, the de­sign life of the road sub­struc­ture be­comes com­pro­mised.

“So prop­er at­ten­tion needs to be paid to the drainage along­side and trans­verse to the road­ways to en­sure that the funds ex­pend­ed on road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­vide good val­ue for mon­ey by hav­ing some rea­son­able longevi­ty.”

Road protests

In the last six weeks, there have been sev­er­al protests in cen­tral and south Trinidad about poor road con­di­tions. On Fri­day, res­i­dents and par­ents of Sa­cred Heart RC School protest­ed over the poor con­di­tion of the road lead­ing to their school on Caratal Road, Gas­par­il­lo.

One of the protest­ing par­ents asked: “Peo­ple pay­ing tax, and alyuh can’t give we a lit­tle road? Alyuh have no mon­ey?

Con­tin­ues on page 11

From page 10

“It is over­bear­ing. Please, I’m plead­ing with the coun­cil­lor, the MP and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. I am plead­ing with alyuh, help the chil­dren, they need an ed­u­ca­tion.”

On Tues­day, Cunu­pia res­i­dents blocked War­ren Road, say­ing they had wait­ed too long for the di­lap­i­dat­ed road to be re­paired. Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly blamed the MOWT, say­ing sev­er­al roads in the con­stituen­cy were in poor con­di­tion. In re­sponse, Min­is­ter Sinanan said the road falls un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

In Au­gust, Rio Claro and Man­zanil­la res­i­dents protest­ed, while in Ju­ly, res­i­dents of La Pas­to­ra Vil­lage, Lopinot, blocked the road with de­bris.

In late Ju­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­spond­ed to a Los Ba­jos res­i­dent’s ap­peal for bet­ter roads with an apol­o­gy. He ad­mit­ted that the road net­work has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed be­cause of a 30 per cent loss of rev­enue since 2015 com­pound­ed by COVID-19.

“It was a sud­den and dra­mat­ic and sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue, so the first pri­or­i­ty was not to main­tain a road paving pro­gramme. Not that we de­lib­er­ate­ly didn’t main­tain the roads but on the list of pri­or­i­ties—we main­tained the main ar­ter­ies through the Min­istry of Works, hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars—but the sec­ondary road pro­gramme suf­fered. That I have to ad­mit, that I have to apol­o­gise for, and that is the rea­son for it,” he said.

In fis­cal 2023, $993.5 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to im­prove the road net­work, as well as bridges. The amount al­lo­cat­ed in fis­cal 2023 was $481.5 mil­lion more than the amount spent by the min­istry be­tween 2021 and April 2023.

$110 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the Works and Trans­port Min­istry’s Ma­jor Con­struc­tion/Ma­jor Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme For Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Unit.

Busi­ness groups: More needs to be done

While the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce ac­knowl­edged that some work was done to im­prove traf­fic flow on the high­ways and some oth­er road­ways, such as in Point Fortin and To­co, more should be done in key ar­eas.

“The poor con­di­tion of many main and sec­ondary roads do have neg­a­tive ef­fects on busi­ness­es and all road users. In­creased traf­fic con­ges­tion, re­duced ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, high­er costs for ve­hi­cle re­pairs, and safe­ty im­pli­ca­tions from dri­vers avoid­ing poor road sur­faces, are just a few of the con­se­quences. These fac­tors can hin­der the ef­fi­cient func­tion­ing of busi­ness­es and in­crease op­er­a­tional costs.

“A clos­er look at the ne­ces­si­ty of, and cost op­tions for, reg­u­lar main­te­nance of our road­ways should be done. Con­duct­ing a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of dif­fer­ent main­te­nance op­tions is es­sen­tial in de­ter­min­ing the best strate­gies for road up­keep while con­sid­er­ing the long-term ben­e­fits.

“In the same breath, the use of tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion for road main­te­nance and mon­i­tor­ing, such as us­ing da­ta an­a­lyt­ics, sen­sors, and pre­dic­tive main­te­nance tools to iden­ti­fy and ad­dress is­sues proac­tive­ly, should be con­sid­ered,” the Cham­ber said.

The group sug­gest­ed a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of the ne­ces­si­ty and cost op­tions for reg­u­lar main­te­nance of road­ways. The eval­u­a­tion should take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion con­sis­tent work by en­ti­ties such as WASA.

The Cham­ber added that it is im­por­tant to en­gage stake­hold­ers to en­sure the coun­try’s road net­works ad­e­quate­ly sup­port com­mu­ni­ties.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh, said road im­prove­ment pro­gramme brought re­sults in the city, as many roads were prob­lem­at­ic be­fore elec­tion sea­son, but con­di­tions have im­proved and are “fair­ly al­right” at the mo­ment.

“We have one or two roads that didn’t get in­clud­ed in the pro­gramme, but the roads are not bad over­all in down­town. Fur­ther south, there are some re­al bad roads. South Trunk Road, lead­ing up to the traf­fic light that needs to be ad­dressed,” Singh said.

The MOWT is not the on­ly body re­spon­si­ble for road re­pairs. The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions al­so have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for roads and re­pairs.