Road work contractors can face a blacklist if they submit shoddy work which begin to fall apart before the expiration of 15 to 20 years, says Works and Transport Minister Fitzgerald Hinds.
Maintaining his Government was committed to getting value for money, Hinds said contractors who failed to deliver quality work would not be contracted in the future. He said when roads were repaired, they expected 15 to 20 years of service from them. He said if it meant spending extra time and money to address drainage and other issues, it would be done.
“We need to have smooth roads without having to be dancing through manholes and potholes. In this country, like it happens in other parts of the world, it can be done, it must be done. So the contractors who come out, they will not be giving us sub-standard work, they will give us quality work, otherwise they won’t get to work for us again,” Hinds said during a tour of Chatham yesterday.
His visit came three months after Chatham residents protested for repairs to a landslip that threatened to cut them off from the rest of the country. Hinds told residents that work would begin before the end of next month.
But that news was somewhat subdued as when Hinds and Point Fortin MP Edmund Dillon visited the community yesterday, four new landslips had developed along the Southern Main Road.
Promising those slippages will also be repaired, Hinds said assessments would have to be done first and contracts issued. However, he again stressed that the country did not generate the amount of revenues it did when oil and gas prices were high.
“It takes money to care,” Hinds told a handful of residents gathered under a tent near one of the landslips.
At least two of the landslips created one-lane traffic and a resident said they worsened with each rainfall. Hinds said his technical officers, who accompanied him on the trip, had a look at the landslips and plans were underway to shore up the areas to prevent further slippage.
“My focus was initially on the slope slippage a bit up from here. That was what Minister Dillon focused our attention on and we sorted it out and we are ready to get on with that. I came to deal with one matter and he has given me more.
“Right behind us is a very recent development so we have our experts here and they have already cast their eyes on that and we will get Earth Investigations Systems Ltd to come here very shortly and conduct some soil test,” Hinds said. As with other project, Hinds said he did not have the cost.
He also promised to have Richardson Road Extension, Point Fortin, paved when funding became available. The road is expected to be used as an alternative route to access the Guapo beach to ease the usual weekend traffic congestion.
Forgive Indarsingh
Responding to Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh’s accusation that Government was politically discriminating against Freeport residents, Hinds said the PNM had always governed all of T&T.
For this reason, he said, the citizenry elected them into Government and Indarsingh’s claims were merely “political small talk.”
He added: “Forgive him, he knows not of what he speaks. Very recently we went to the constituency of Naparima to attend to problems there so what you would have heard from that MP is just the usual political small talk.
“We have told the country in our campaign, we told this country for 60 years, we told this country by our example and by our leadership, that we govern for the benefit for all of Trinidad and Tobago.
“That is the reason why we are in Government today. The people understood that and they voted resoundingly for a PNM Government. And we are wise enough to know that if you want this country to develop and you want this country to do well, you can’t look at selected areas, so you can ignore him.”
Last weekend, Indarsingh accused the Government of discriminating against Freeport residents who used Beaucarro Road.
He said he wrote to Hinds on three occasions, pleading for repair works on the road but all his requests have fallen on deaf ears. He questioned whether the stoppage of work was an act of political discrimination against the residents, adding millions are being spent on remedial works on the Southern Main Road, La Brea, which is a PNM constituency.