Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Min­istry of Works ex­pects to have a so­lu­tion to deal with the col­laps­ing bride at Per­se­ver­ance Road Bridge, Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas, with­in the next two weeks.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that his min­istry has tak­en over the project in the wake of calls from nu­mer­ous en­ti­ties to re­pair the struc­ture as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

“We are look­ing at the dif­fer­ent op­tions right now. The min­istry has vir­tu­al­ly tak­en it over, the Min­istry of Works, we are hop­ing that by next week, we should have a so­lu­tion,” Sinanan said, not­ing that the land un­der the bridge was still mov­ing and a Bai­ley Bridge could not be in­stalled or that too may col­lapse.

He added, “We have to do some ground­work first and then if re­quired, we would put the Bai­ley (bridge). Right now, we are sta­bil­is­ing the bridge and with­in the next week, we should have the prob­lem solved. We are look­ing at the dif­fer­ent op­tions to have it sort­ed out in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

The bridge start­ed crack­ing last Wednes­day and over the week­end, the south­ern end of the bridge dropped just over 20 inch­es. The soil un­der the south­ern foot­ing had been washed away due to the heavy flood­wa­ters in re­cent weeks and cracks emerged on the foun­da­tion of the bridge.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed al­so yes­ter­day called on the min­istry to send more traf­fic war­dens in­to the bor­ough to deal with the traf­fic caused due to the clo­sure of the bridge.

Last Fri­day, mo­torists spent over two hours in traf­fic as they had to find al­ter­na­tive out­lets to get in and out of the bor­ough.

How­ev­er, Sinanan said oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al projects be­ing un­der­tak­en by the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion were al­so con­tribut­ing to the traf­fic.

Mean­while, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) says the con­ges­tion cre­at­ed by the dis­as­ter was im­pact­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my.

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the col­lapsed bridge had led to a mas­sive traf­fic pile-up on Fri­day, af­fect­ing those who trav­el to Ch­agua­nas for work and shop­ping.

“Shop­pers, de­terred by the long com­mute times, are choos­ing to vis­it al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions. This shift is se­vere­ly im­pact­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my, with busi­ness­es in Ch­agua­nas ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a no­tice­able de­cline in cus­tomer traf­fic,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj said the on­go­ing Uri­ah But­ler High­way widen­ing project has al­so com­pound­ed the prob­lem.

“Res­i­dents are strug­gling to find al­ter­na­tive routes, adding to the over­all con­ges­tion in the area. The bridge col­lapse has ef­fec­tive­ly re­moved a vi­tal link, mak­ing trav­el and com­mute time even more dif­fi­cult. Some com­muters com­plained that it took an ad­di­tion­al two hours dur­ing the peak pe­ri­od.”