RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Three con­tracts have al­ready been award­ed for the re­moval and re­place­ment of the ca­ble bar­ri­ers along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan dis­closed on Tues­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Sinanan said he planned to vis­it the ar­eas along the high­way, start­ing from all key points.

“We are mov­ing away from ca­bles be­cause they are very ex­pen­sive to main­tain. Once you touch them, the en­tire area fails. We are go­ing to re­move them and use them in oth­er ar­eas. We will be re­plac­ing them in cer­tain ar­eas with guard rails and then util­is­ing the ca­bles else­where. It is not eco­nom­i­cal for us to keep the ca­ble bar­ri­ers. The guard rails will be bet­ter,” he said.

When asked whether the guard rails work as well as ca­ble bar­ri­ers, Sinanan re­spond­ed, “Yes, they work the same way. They are in­stalled all over Trinidad and all over the world.”

Asked when the guard rails would be in­stalled, Sinanan said he would dis­close this at a lat­er time when all the arrange­ments are in place.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate last Feb­ru­ary, Sinanan added that met­al guard rails are bet­ter when it comes to crash pro­tec­tion, low­er life-cy­cle costs, and ef­fi­cien­cy of re­pairs. He re­vealed that the min­istry will im­ple­ment a medi­um bar­ri­er pro­gramme span­ning over the next three years.

Phase one will con­sist of three pack­ages: in­stalling W-type met­al beam guard rails on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way in the Ca­roni area (5.2 km), along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way (8.34 km), and in the Vic­to­ria West re­gion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way (12.66 km).

Sinanan said they in­tend­ed to re­place 26.2 km of ca­ble bar­ri­ers. He al­so men­tioned that the min­istry will iden­ti­fy “hotspots” where ac­ci­dents reg­u­lar­ly oc­cur.

The Min­is­ter al­so re­called that af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed Works Min­is­ter, he was pre­sent­ed with an out­stand­ing bill of $18 mil­lion for the main­te­nance of ca­ble bar­ri­ers.

In June, fol­low­ing the death of Az­izah Mo­hammed, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works Rishi Sookhai ex­plained that phase one of the project con­sists of three pack­ages, two of which will fo­cus on the Ca­roni area and one in Vic­to­ria West. At that time, Sookhai said both projects were due to be com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber 2024, re­spec­tive­ly.

Sev­er­al peo­ple have died along the high­way this year, the lat­est be­ing busi­ness­man Sachin Teeluck­d­har­ry, of Clarke Road, Pe­nal, and Ryan Ram­nanan, of Tul­sa Trace, San Fran­cique, who per­ished af­ter their van flew off the high­way and crashed in­to the Cipero Riv­er on Au­gust 5.

Their bod­ies were found by the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team led by Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat. Since then their par­ents have re­newed the call for the gov­ern­ment to in­stall the guard rails as soon as pos­si­ble to save lives.