Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are point­ing fin­gers at each oth­er over who is re­spon­si­ble for the col­laps­ing Per­se­ver­ance Road bridge over the Ca­paro Riv­er. The bridge was dis­cov­ered to have de­vel­oped cracks and col­laps­ing on Wednes­day evening.

The bridge is now closed to all ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic, with­out any cer­tain­ty of when emer­gency works will com­mence, de­spite as­sess­ments be­ing con­duct­ed by of­fi­cials of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

As a re­sult, mo­torists be­came trapped for hours in snarling traf­fic with­in the bor­ough, which al­so spilled over on­to the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the site, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va North Ravi Rati­ram, Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed and deputy May­or Melis­sa Jadoo­nanan were crit­i­cal of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day.

Rati­ram ar­gued that the three bridges in the area were in dire need of re­pairs, adding that the Per­se­ver­ance Road bridge was the lat­est ad­di­tion to this list.

He at­trib­uted the is­sue to a lack of main­te­nance by the min­istry.

“There has been a fail­ure on the part of this ad­min­is­tra­tion to clean the wa­ter­cours­es all the way out to the sea. There is no smooth flow or swift run-off, which com­pro­mis­es the bridges,” Rati­ram said.

He added that the bridge was a main thor­ough­fare pro­vid­ing ac­cess to health fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­agua­nas, and in­sist­ed that busi­ness­es were suf­fer­ing heavy loss­es due to its col­lapse.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Sinanan said the bridge does not fall un­der his min­istry.

“It’s easy for the MP and the may­or to try to gain po­lit­i­cal mileage from this sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, there is a process that needs to be fol­lowed. The Min­istry of Works is on stand­by. Once a re­quest comes from the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we will pro­vide what­ev­er as­sis­tance is nec­es­sary,” Sinanan said.

He added, “The bridge falls un­der the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. The bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion should have been mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion for any chal­lenges. The first call is for the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion. If they can­not han­dle it, they are sup­posed to reach out to their line min­istry. The line min­istry will then con­tact the Min­istry of Works if ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance is need­ed. We have not re­ceived any re­quests from the line min­istry, which is the process that needs to be fol­lowed.”

The bridge fa­cil­i­tates traf­fic for many vil­lages in Cen­tral Trinidad, help­ing to by­pass the Ch­agua­nas town cen­tre.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi not­ed that no of­fi­cial re­quest had been made to his min­istry, and he could not re­call see­ing such a re­quest.

“The may­or needs to en­sure that prop­er re­quests are made. I can tell you that none of the cor­po­ra­tions have ful­ly utilised their Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) funds. I have not yet checked, but they need to make a prop­er re­quest,” he said.

The min­is­ter added, “The cor­po­ra­tion needs to hold a meet­ing to as­sess their bud­get. They must de­ter­mine, for ex­am­ple, if they have $10 and the bridge costs $12, whether they need ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance, or if they have $10, have spent $4, and the bridge costs $6, if they can man­age it them­selves. They need to com­plete their due dili­gence.”

He con­tin­ued, “Un­der the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law, prop­er pro­ce­dures must be fol­lowed. They can­not sim­ply make a state­ment with­out tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps. In an emer­gency, there is a process for trig­ger­ing a ten­der, and it must be doc­u­ment­ed. All of these re­quire­ments need to be ful­filled.”

In re­sponse, May­or Mo­hammed said he had sent a let­ter lob­by­ing Sinanan for his in­ter­ven­tion.

“Now that you’ve in­formed me that the min­is­ter is tak­ing a hands-off ap­proach with the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, I will send a let­ter to my line min­is­ter. I’ll re­quest that he lob­by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to se­cure spe­cial fund­ing for the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to re­pair this bridge. As I men­tioned be­fore, even if we pool all the cor­po­ra­tion’s PSIP mon­ey, it still won’t be enough to re­build the bridge.”