Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan said the Ministry is considering to install concrete barriers along the highways because of the high cost to repair the broken cable barriers.
He said insurance companies should be made to pay for the repairs and noted that there were two cases currently before the court.
“Unfortunately when people run into the barriers and don’t report them, there is no way to bring a case against anyone,” he said.
The cable barriers were installed after a series of fatal collisions in cross-median crashes.
Sinanan said Ministry had been saddled with a bill dating back to 2013 for the installation of cable barriers on the highway. It was part of the reason why his Ministry required a $62.5m variation discussed before the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament on Tuesday.
Sinanan said the contractor retained in 2013 on a three-year contract was owed $18m.
But he lamented that the cable barrier project is extremely costly.
Sinanan said a month ago the Ministry spent $1m to repair cable barriers on the highway, “since then a significant portion of it went down, once you have an impact you lose about 500 metres,” he said.
As a result, he said, the Ministry was now looking at the entire highway and whether they should go the route of “Jersey Barriers on a phased basis because I don’t know if we can continue to spend this amount of money on cable barriers, it is ridiculously high to maintain.” Doing repairs in-house, he said, will “save on maintenance cost.”
Responding to questions from Princes Town MP Barry Padarath, Sinanan said the installation of the Jersey barriers “cannot happen overnight, because you can’t just put Jersey barriers where the cable barriers are, you have to fill the median and when you fill then can put the jersey barriers. It cannot be done in a year.”
Sinanan admitted in response to a question from Fyzabad MP Dr Lackram Bodoe that the Ministry was exploring “getting the insurance companies to pay.”
In relation to another debt, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Moonilal says a $233m loan taken out by UDeCOTT from ANSA Merchant Bank when he was Minister, was to facilitate payment on a loan which a former chairman of UDeCOTT Calder Hart took from the Home Mortgage Bank.
Moonilal made the claim when the Standing Finance Committee met to discuss the $796,297,635 Variation of Appropriation which will be debated today as it forms part of the mid-term review to be presented by Finance Minister Colm Imbert.
Moonilal has promised to speak more to the issue when the debate begins.
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert raised the issue of the $233m loan as he sought an increase in recurrent expenditure of $11,200,000 for the Ministry of Housing and Urban
Development to finance the principal obligation on a loan entered into in October 2013 for the Real Spring Housing development project.
Imbert said the Government was “still trying to find what the money was spent on because we inherited a half-finished project.” Despite this, he said, the government was committed to repaying the loan.
Moonilal sought answers from Imbert whether “this is the same loan arrangement taken out on August 21, 2006, involving Home Mortgage Bank,” but Imbert referred the issue back to Moonilal saying it was under Moonilal’s watch that the UDeCOTT “engaged a $233,097,000 loan from ANSA to meet the cost of construction at Real Spring.”