Shal­iza Has­sanali

Se­nior Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and trans­port en­gi­neer Dr Trevor Townsend says that the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent­ly formed road-re­pair com­pa­ny should in­ves­ti­gate why the coun­try’s roads have not been stand­ing the test of time.

His com­ments came af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Au­gust 23 an­nounce­ment that the Cab­i­net had ap­proved a spe­cial pur­pose road-re­pair com­pa­ny with­in the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and that a board had been ap­point­ed. The PM did not say who was ap­point­ed to chair the board or who are its mem­bers.

The PM, ac­knowl­edg­ing the need to im­prove de­plorable roads in the coun­try, said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would make fund­ing avail­able to the com­pa­ny and con­trac­tors would be mo­bilised to fix the roads.

Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme in 2021 some $736.2 mil­lion was in­vest­ed in roads and bridges in­fra­struc­ture through­out T&T. The Road/Con­struc­tion/Ma­jor Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme ex­e­cut­ed by the PURE unit utilised the sum of $74.9 mil­lion for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of sev­er­al sec­tions of road­ways across Trinidad.

Cur­rent­ly, sec­ondary road works are han­dled by three or­gan­i­sa­tions–the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and the Pro­gramme of Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy which falls un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT). The MOWT is on­ly re­spon­si­ble for the main­te­nance of high­ways and main roads.

De­spite mil­lions of dol­lars spent, sev­er­al roads across the coun­try are rid­dled with pot­holes, craters and de­pres­sions, caus­ing com­mu­ni­ties to stage fiery protests week­ly for im­proved con­di­tions.

Townsend said the board of this new com­pa­ny should ex­am­ine why some roads have been col­laps­ing and pitch erod­ing with­in days, weeks or months of be­ing paved.

“Maybe we need to look at why some of our roads have been fail­ing and what the con­trac­tor has been asked to do. We need to find out why these road prob­lems are oc­cur­ring. No one is do­ing a deep dig in terms of why we are see­ing these fail­ures,” Townsend said.

The en­gi­neer point­ed out that if a road is not prop­er­ly grad­ed and the lay­er­ing of as­phalt is poor then it would not stand the test of time.

“A prop­er­ly de­signed and con­struct­ed road­way will give you years of life…it can last decades.”

He ad­mit­ted that a lot of the coun­try’s sec­ondary roads were not prop­er­ly de­signed and con­struct­ed. “They are up­grad­ed traces. They have a lot of prob­lems with slope sta­bil­i­ty all along the Cen­tral Range. If you have a prob­lem with slope sta­bil­i­ty what­ev­er you build is go­ing to be a prob­lem, it will col­lapse. We al­so have se­ri­ous weath­er­ing of rocks on the North Coast hill­side and La­dy Young Road.”

Townsend said an­oth­er is­sue was get­ting the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty to prop­er­ly fix a road af­ter re­plac­ing or re­pair­ing a rup­tured pipeline. “That, with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, has not been hap­pen­ing. That is a ma­jor mat­ter.”

These is­sues must be ad­dressed, he added.

No spe­cif­ic de­tails on the new com­pa­ny

The PM’s an­nounce­ment prompt­ed Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine to ques­tion the rea­son be­hind the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­pa­ny with­in the min­istry to fix roads.

It was re­port­ed in the May 15 edi­tion of the Sun­day Guardian that a sec­ondary road and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion com­pa­ny will fall un­der Faris Al-Rawi’s min­istry. At that time, the com­pa­ny had not yet been reg­is­tered nor were any board mem­bers ap­point­ed, but $100 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to “cap­i­talise and es­tab­lish it”.

Im­bert was grilled about the new com­pa­ny on May 13 dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee to dis­cuss the $3 bil­lion vari­a­tions to the bud­get as part of the al­lo­ca­tions. He was asked about the new road com­pa­ny and the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar al­lo­ca­tion but pro­vid­ed no an­swers. He had con­firmed then that the com­pa­ny was not reg­is­tered or as­signed to any min­istry, and that the Prime Min­is­ter was re­spon­si­ble for that as­sign­ment.

At­tempts by this re­porter to get more de­tails about the com­pa­ny over the last two weeks have been un­suc­cess­ful.

The Sun­day Guardian was un­able to find out who were the board mem­bers and spe­cif­ic de­tails about the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny.

Over a week ago, the Sun­day Guardian sent What­sApp and text mes­sages to Al-Rawi with a list of ques­tions re­gard­ing the new com­pa­ny un­der his re­mit, which re­mained un­read.

On Sep­tem­ber 7, this re­porter sent Al-Rawi an­oth­er What­sApp mes­sage re­mind­ing him of the ques­tions pre­vi­ous­ly sent and if he could re­spond.

“Hi, sor­ry for the de­lay have been jug­gling,” was Al-Rawi’s re­ply.

Al-Rawi was again re­mind­ed that ques­tions were sent to him and if he could re­spond.

“On what?” he replied. Al­though an­oth­er mes­sage out­lined the na­ture of the ques­tions, Al-Rawi did not read the mes­sage. Up to late yes­ter­day, he had not re­spond­ed to the ques­tions sent.

Re­peat­ed calls to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan’s cell phone went unan­swered and he did not re­spond to a What­sApp mes­sage.

‘We need a tidy sum to re­pair de­te­ri­o­rat­ing roads’

Giv­ing his views on the for­ma­tion of the new road re­pair com­pa­ny, Townsend said this was noth­ing new.

He re­called that in the 1980s, the then Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished a sec­ondary roads com­pa­ny.

“That was set up with the as­sis­tance of a Ger­man tech­ni­cal com­pa­ny, and they were in­volved in the con­struc­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of sec­ondary roads in the coun­try.” A plant was al­so con­struct­ed in Waller­field to as­sist with the crush­ing of ma­te­ri­als.

How­ev­er, the for­eign com­pa­ny faced lit­i­ga­tion af­ter some con­trac­tors were not paid, caus­ing them to go out of busi­ness.

“Since then, I am not aware of a spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny be­ing set up. I am not sure what is the ra­tio­nale be­hind it. I sus­pect that they are try­ing to cen­tralise a ca­pa­bil­i­ty of do­ing sec­ondary roads be­cause the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions don’t have the lev­el of ex­per­tise and equip­ment to do sig­nif­i­cant road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.”

The cor­po­ra­tions, he said, would have to “con­tract” out the road works.

Townsend said he would as­sume that more in­for­ma­tion would be pro­vid­ed in the Sep­tem­ber 26 bud­get re­gard­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­mit and roles.

Asked if the $100 mil­lion would be suf­fi­cient to im­prove our sec­ondary roads, Townsend said “What I am not hear­ing is how much these re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions were al­lo­cat­ed and spent on road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion? We should al­so be told how much of that was spent on labour as op­posed to ma­te­ri­als. I am not hear­ing that. All I am hear­ing is a lot of noise.”

Townsend said the cost to fix these de­te­ri­o­rat­ing roads would not be cheap.

“It will be a tidy sum,” he added.