On­ly a por­tion of the 9,592 km of roads in this coun­try falls un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­pair and main­te­nance of a size­able por­tion of the road net­work falls to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

With­in the Works Min­istry’s port­fo­lio are ma­jor roads and the coun­try’s net­work of four-lane and six-lane high­ways.

This dis­tinc­tion is of­ten lost on the av­er­age road user faced with the dai­ly frus­tra­tion of dodg­ing pot­holes and nav­i­gat­ing col­lapsed sec­tions of road­ways. All they know is the dis­com­fort and in­con­ve­nience of com­mutes filled with de­lays and traf­fic con­ges­tion be­cause of the poor state of so many roads.

Bad roads rank just be­low an un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply among the biggest in­fra­struc­tur­al fail­ures in T&T and in re­cent days, com­mu­ni­ty protests have in­ten­si­fied, with res­i­dents vent­ing their rage at the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. That anger is not mis­placed — the prob­lem has wors­ened un­der suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments.

In some com­mu­ni­ties, res­i­dents are com­plain­ing about decades of ne­glect and un­kept promis­es.

Since blame for the sit­u­a­tion is shared by var­i­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions, nei­ther the PNM nor the UNC should at­tempt to politi­cise this prob­lem.

How­ev­er, there is very lit­tle chance of bad roads be­ing kept off po­lit­i­cal plat­forms, not with pot­holes and land­slips in the spot­light as the coun­try counts down to lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. In all like­li­hood, the cam­paign will get in­to full swing just as the Works and Trans­port Min­istry kicks off an ac­cel­er­at­ed re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme.

As he toured a road re­pair project on the Cor­pus Christi hol­i­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan an­nounced plans to har­ness the man­pow­er and re­sources of the Pro­gramme Up­grade for Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Bridges Land­slips and Traf­fic Man­age­ment (BLT) and the High­way Di­vi­sion for the pro­gramme.

This fol­lows an an­nounce­ment ear­li­er in the week by Sec­ondary Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed chair­man Her­bert George that the com­pa­ny has been al­lo­cat­ed $100 mil­lion and will get a fur­ther $100 mil­lion for sec­ondary road re­pairs.

If these an­nounce­ments have not been lusti­ly ap­plaud­ed by the pub­lic, that is be­cause cit­i­zens have heard it all be­fore. Not on­ly that, ma­jor re­pair projects have been launched with much fan­fare, on­ly for the fresh­ly paved roads to quick­ly fall back in­to a state of di­lap­i­da­tion.

What is nev­er ex­plained is why this is the sit­u­a­tion in a coun­try that boasts of a nat­ur­al won­der, the Pitch Lake, the world’s largest nat­ur­al de­posit of as­phalt, with more than ten mil­lion tons of the ma­te­r­i­al that can be used to sur­face roads.

Why is it that cracks have to de­vel­op in­to huge craters and ero­sion is al­lowed to whit­tle road sur­faces al­most to noth­ing be­fore the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties even be­gin to pay at­ten­tion?

Could all of this in­con­ve­nience, frus­tra­tion and ex­pense be avoid­ed by im­ple­ment­ing a prop­er road main­te­nance pro­gramme?

Bad roads re­duce pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­crease stress, as cit­i­zens spend more time in traf­fic. They al­so in­crease the risk of ac­ci­dents and, in too many in­stances, threat­en to cut off en­tire com­mu­ni­ties from the rest of the coun­try.

For now, ex­pan­sive road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes can’t be avoid­ed be­cause of the de­plorable con­di­tion of so many roads. How­ev­er, if there isn’t an ac­com­pa­ny­ing pro­gramme of rou­tine main­te­nance, they will all be a huge waste of time and mon­ey.