KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says there may be le­gal ac­tion as Cab­i­net de­lib­er­ates on a re­port on the failed por­tion of the Archibald-DeLeon High­way.

But as the min­is­ter spoke to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he did not di­vulge what caused 180 me­tres of the north­bound car­riage­way along Mos­qui­to Creek, South Oropouche, to col­lapse on Jan­u­ary 22, 2022. He said that be­cause there were ar­eas of the re­port that could spark lit­i­ga­tion, he did not want to pre­empt the Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sions.

“Le­gal ac­tions may be tak­en to re­cov­er where the fault re­al­ly lies, so I have to be very care­ful as to what I put out at this point be­cause the Gov­ern­ment, def­i­nite­ly, will be look­ing at re­cov­er­ing any mon­ey. We have to ex­plore that,” Sinanan said.

In May 2022, Sinanan an­nounced in the Sen­ate that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was un­der­way in­to the col­lapse, with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) en­gag­ing its ge­ot­ech­ni­cal con­sul­tant, Earth In­ves­ti­ga­tion Lim­it­ed and the CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank for in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to con­duct an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Sinanan re­called that fol­low­ing the col­lapse, NID­CO en­gaged lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tants to go through the process of de­ter­min­ing what hap­pened and what caused the fail­ure and come up with so­lu­tions.

“The re­port is be­fore the Cab­i­net, which en­tails both the cause of the fail­ure and the so­lu­tions to the prob­lem. So that is ac­tu­al­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net for a de­ci­sion on the way for­ward. I do not want to pre­empt the Cab­i­net, but it is be­fore the Cab­i­net as we speak. I think short­ly, the Cab­i­net will de­cide on the way for­ward,” he ex­plained.

The Gov­ern­ment opened the high­way con­nect­ing San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin in Oc­to­ber 2023 with three in­com­plete por­tions at Mos­qui­to Creek, Mon De­sir, Fyz­abad and Vance Riv­er, La Brea. The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) par­tial­ly opened the Mon De­sir In­ter­change two weeks ago.

Sinanan said he had not heard any­one speak­ing neg­a­tive­ly about the high­way, as it now takes mo­torists 20 min­utes to dri­ve be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin when it pre­vi­ous­ly took over two hours.