KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says ad­verse weath­er events have caused de­lays in the com­ple­tion of many projects around the coun­try.

Speak­ing to jour­nal­ists in La Brea yes­ter­day, Sinanan said rain pos­es a chal­lenge to in­fra­struc­tur­al work, in­clud­ing reg­u­lar road paving.

He said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) has 60 on­go­ing road paving projects, which they can on­ly do un­der suit­able weath­er.

He said large con­struc­tions like the Va­len­cia to To­co Road­way Project, the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to San­gre Grande Project and the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin Project all suf­fered set­backs be­cause of the heavy rain­fall.

“Since April, we have been get­ting se­ri­ous rain­fall. The ground is now sat­u­rat­ed, as you can see. Any­where you go, land­slips are be­ing cre­at­ed, but this seems to be the new norm, and we have to work around that. It means that we have to re­plan some of our pro­grammes to make sure that we make full use of the dry sea­son, no mat­ter how short it is,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan said the Min­istry re­cent­ly had a road paving ex­er­cise in Ma­coya sched­uled for one night but be­cause of rain­fall, it took three nights.

He is hop­ing for dry weath­er from Jan­u­ary 2023 as the Min­istry plans to ex­e­cute many projects.

“The in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad, like around the world, is be­ing chal­lenged be­cause the weath­er pat­tern has dras­ti­cal­ly changed. Over the last cou­ple of months, we had some in­tense weath­er. In the past week, we had some se­ri­ous chal­lenges.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, he said all bridges un­der the Min­istry re­mained in­tact, de­spite ru­mours and so­cial me­dia posts about struc­tures col­laps­ing and cut­ting off peo­ple. He said there was a road col­lapse be­fore a bridge in Ca­roni, which the Min­istry re­paired in 24 hours, and an­oth­er in Cu­mu­to was a work­ing job site and the road was al­ready closed.

Sinanan was at the site of a land­slip along Sobo Ex­ten­sion, Sobo Vil­lage, La Brea, where a leak­ing Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) line caused part of the road to col­lapse.

Brighton/Ves­signy Coun­cil­lor Ger­ald De­bisette said the road be­came im­pass­able. WASA re­paired the leak last Tues­day.

De­bisette called Naeem Ali of NA­MAL­CO Con­struc­tion Ser­vice for as­sis­tance.

He said that Ali vis­it­ed the site hours lat­er and agreed to re­store the road­way free of charge. Re­pairs be­gan yes­ter­day with the hope of com­ple­tion to­day.