RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Two sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing in­to the col­lapse of the South Trunk Road at Mos­qui­to Creek, says Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Sinanan said he is yet to get any of the re­ports about the col­lapse of 180 me­tres of road­way near Mos­qui­to Creek, Shore of Peace.

“There are two in­ves­ti­ga­tions, one by NID­CO and the oth­er by the Min­istry of Works. I am await­ing both re­ports,” Sinanan said.

Asked when he ex­pect­ed to col­lect them, Sinanan said, “I can­not say. When I get the re­ports, I will make fur­ther com­ments.”

On Wednes­day, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Creek, at­tor­ney Richard Jage­sar said he has filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act en­quiry ask­ing for spe­cif­ic de­tails about the col­lapse of the road.

He ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of with­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion about the con­tract. Jages­sar al­so ques­tioned whether there was a war­ran­ty clause that pre­vent­ed more tax­pay­ers funds from be­ing used to rec­ti­fy the ap­par­ent flaws in the project.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of T&T (APEC) has al­so called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion but said giv­en the na­ture of the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment there, the col­lapse may not be the re­sult of failed en­gi­neer­ing de­signs.

APEC’s hon­orary sec­re­tary en­gi­neer Richard Akong said a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion was need­ed to de­ter­mine why the road­way failed.

“The na­ture and ex­tent of the cur­rent road­way fail­ure may well be an un­fore­seen phe­nom­e­non re­sult­ing from in­creas­ing­ly chang­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions in­flu­enc­ing ex­ist­ing com­plex ge­o­log­i­cal and there­fore ge­ot­ech­ni­cal chal­lenges,” he added.

Sev­er­al ac­tivists in­clud­ing the pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion group Ed­ward Mood­ie and sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud have con­demned the works say­ing it should nev­er have been built ear the wet­lands.

Mos­qui­to Creek was said to be the most tech­ni­cal as­pect of the high­way. Since the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy high­way project un­der the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, dis­cus­sions were held as to whether a cause­way should be built with­in the man­groves or whether the road should be widened.

OAS Con­struc­tura failed to com­plete the road ex­ten­sion along the Creek.

In June 2018, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it will di­vide the project in­to pack­ages to boost com­pe­ti­tion among lo­cal con­trac­tors and so dri­ve down prices.

Af­ter eval­u­a­tion Jusam­co Pavers, al­so known as Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors won the con­tract to up­grade 2.4 km of the north­bound and south­bound car­riage­way, with a re­vised fi­nal bid of $280,976,489.08 VAT in­clu­sive.