Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­mand­ed full ac­count­abil­i­ty for the bil­lions spent on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, de­clar­ing it a na­tion­al dis­grace that so many roads re­main in dis­re­pair.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, the Prime Min­is­ter said: “It’s a shame that bil­lions of dol­lars—over $10 mil­lion—have been spent over the last nine years, and we can hard­ly find a good road in the coun­try, flood­ing re­mains ram­pant.”

She called for ur­gent au­dits and test re­sults for sev­er­al ma­jor projects, in­clud­ing road­works in Man­zanil­la, the Cu­mu­to High­way ex­ten­sion, the Point Fortin high­way from Ota­heite to La Brea, high­way widen­ing in Ch­agua­nas, and the new O’Meara Road.

“We need to get test re­sults, dear Min­is­ter be­cause those roads are fail­ing or have failed,” she said, ad­dress­ing the Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, who was present.

She al­so called for an up­date on staffing and the progress of projects in the High­ways Di­vi­sion, PURE Unit, NID­CO, and the Drainage Di­vi­sions.

“Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion has to be paid to PURE, NID­CO and the Drainage Di­vi­sions, which have all spent bil­lions—and yet, shame­ful­ly, the road and drainage in­fra­struc­ture re­mains in a hor­ren­dous state in most spaces.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so reignit­ed scruti­ny of Bridge­mans Ser­vices Group and the Cabo Star ves­sel.

“You may have for­got­ten about Bridge­mans and the Cabo Star, which is owned by Bridge­mans and is still op­er­at­ing de­spite all the scan­dal and all the facts re­lat­ing to that com­pa­ny,” she said.

When asked about le­gal re­course, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the law pro­vides mech­a­nisms to hold con­trac­tors ac­count­able.

“There is a law, there is a de­fects pe­ri­od with­in which the con­trac­tor, if the con­trac­tor has failed, is ob­lig­at­ed in law to rem­e­dy those de­fects. And if it’s mon­ey, you have to pay the mon­ey.”

She con­firmed that many of the projects in ques­tion were re­cent­ly com­plet­ed and still fall with­in that le­gal pe­ri­od, mak­ing state ac­tion pos­si­ble.

Fol­low­ing se­vere flood­ing in No­vem­ber 2022 that caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age, the Man­zanil­la–Ma­yaro Road un­der­went a com­pre­hen­sive re­con­struc­tion. The project aimed to en­hance re­silience against fu­ture flood­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges.

In terms of the Elmi­na Clarke-Allen High­way, that project rep­re­sents the first phase of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la. Of­fi­cial­ly opened in April 2025, the high­way con­nects Cu­mu­to to San­gre Grande.

Af­ter more than a decade of con­struc­tion and plan­ning, the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was ful­ly opened on Sep­tem­ber 31, 2023, while to ad­dress traf­fic con­ges­tion, the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way un­der­went a widen­ing project be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Chase Vil­lage.

The O’Meara Road in Ari­ma un­der­went a sig­nif­i­cant up­grade, cul­mi­nat­ing in its re­nam­ing to Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian Boule­vard in Feb­ru­ary, ho­n­our­ing the late MP who per­ished in a fire along with two of her chil­dren.