RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do's $16 mil­lion walkover is fi­nal­ly opened af­ter two years of con­struc­tion and San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al Rawi says he is con­fi­dent that peo­ple will use it.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing on Wednes­day night, Al Rawi said the Rien­zi Kir­ton High­way has been widened to eight lanes. For those delin­quent pedes­tri­ans who choose to cross the high­way rather than use the walkover, Al Rawi said there will be enough mu­nic­i­pal po­lice mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

"I want to re­mind you are speak­ing to the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment which has 771 ac­tive mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers and that will move to 1,500. They will be part of our com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing which is part of our lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form," he said.

He al­so said the moth­ers of Em­bac­cdere will be vig­i­lant and will en­sure that chil­dren use the walkover.

"Our kids are un­der con­stant su­per­vi­sion. and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice will be do­ing a fair part of our work," Al Rawi con­tend­ed.

Say­ing the walkover was a cru­cial as­pect of the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project, Al Rawi said over 2,000 res­i­dents from Ram­saran Street and Em­bac­cadere will be able to uti­lize the walkover to get to the city's schools.

"From 2013 to 2015, there were deaths, young chil­dren were killed while cross­ing to go to school. Be­cause of this walkover we now can mar­ry com­mu­ni­ties, Ram­saran Street is part of Em­bac­cadere," he said.

He added: " This ma­jor artery from the Cross Cross­ing food strip to where we are re­de­vel­op­ing Plaza San Car­los which is the Wharf. We are go­ing to ag­i­tate for a sec­ond walk­way clos­er to Skin­ner Park as we build the sec­ondary grounds," Al-Rawi said.

Mean­while, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said that even though there were de­lays dur­ing Covid and the price of steel rose as­tro­nom­i­cal­ly, the walkover was com­plet­ed with­in bud­get.

"It is one of the largest walkovers ever built in Trinidad. It went over the time frame but with­in bud­get. It was one of the few projects wa­ter we ad­ver­tised cer­tain time­lines and it was done at min­i­mum in­con­ve­nience to the pop­u­la­tion," Sinanan said.

He said oth­er as­pects of the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project were com­ing on stream.

"If you see the road net­work, there is a vast im­prove­ment and there are sev­er­al things about why it was de­layed. We went through two years of a pan­dem­ic, there were con­struc­tion de­lays and con­trac­tors Coos­al and Jusam­co nev­er came off the job. The project con­tin­ued dur­ing Covid," Sinanan added.

Project di­rec­tor for the Pro­gramme Up­grade for Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Hay­den Phillip said the walkover was 53 me­ters dou­ble span with three ramps.

"At any point, you want­ed to go there are foot­paths. The ramp is up to ADA stan­dard, so some­one can wheel up and wheel down," he said. He al­so added that all drainage around the project was up­grad­ed.

"If you look at Rail­ing on the thrust, it's the type that you can­not throw things down on any pass­ing car and you can’t jump over. It is built that way and the se­cu­ri­ty pan­el is ex­pen­sive.