Laudat road project completion set for July 15

An excavator clearing debris from a landslide on the Laudat road in March, which caused a vehicle with two men to go over a cliff. The men jumped out from the vehicle to save themselves.

The residents of Laudat have been promised a fully completed road by July 15, 2010.

At a recently held meeting with the community, a representative of the contracting company-DIPCON for the Roseau Valley Road Improvement and Maintenance  Project (RIMP), Ian Singh told villagers that ninety-five percent of the tarish has been placed.

“In terms of the completion date, a date has been forced on us and we will meet that target the middle of July. Because basically a lot of hard work has been done already… It’s just servicing … There are four more culverts to go,” Singh said.

“Beside  some more work on an area where the recent landslide occurred there is no more work to do, other than servicing the areas and pave the road …There are no more drains to build … I can’t see servicing taking more than two and a half months…,” he explained.

Singh spoke of the recent slide on the road which caused the damaged to a pickup and physical harm to two passengers.

“ I know there’s a lot of people say why isn’t the contractor cutting, why doesn’t he have a machine there, we weren’t suppose to do anything more than what we have done…they have to find money to do it…. they have to draw a design… we weren’t suppose to do anything more there…” Singh said.

Singh said that a lot of things that persons may see that needs to be done may not be a part of their contract.

“A lot of things that you might rightly see and think and it may be a very good idea… It might not be a part of our contract. We don’t pay our selves so we don’t just build what we think might be correct…,” he said.

At that meeting, villagers raised concerns about the slow road works, dangerous areas among other concerns with the road.

Villagers spoke of their dissatisfaction of the project and called on officials to speed up the project. They also called on those involved to show concern for villagers commuting the area when constructing.

Many villagers argued that the roads were not being built in a safe and conducive manner.

Chief Technical officer (CTO) of the project Kendal Johnson who gave an overview of the project, acknowledged the project delays and said that they were several reasons for them.

“ As we look at the project over the years I think we have come to the realization that we are very late…we are very late and delayed because of several reasons…The original scope of the project did not consider or …did not envisage that amount of excavation and road works. As a result the extra works needed more time to be done,” the CTO said.

He spoke of an earlier landslide that cause delay further to the project. “Critically for the Laudat section though, was the incidence of a slide close to the Laudat Trafalgar junction because of that incident, heavy equipment really could not be transported towards the Laudat area for expediting or making the works faster, as a result, the Laudat end suffered a little bit delay,” Johnson said.

He added that many other reasons could be given as to the slowness of the project which include the apparent slowness of the contractor, difficulty getting sufficient and adequately skills workers,the necessary equipment. Johnson said that the ministry has been on the contractor’s back  and now see a fair amount of work being done on project.

The meeting was also attended by the Parliamentary representative for the area and Minister of Trade John Colin McIntyre and other public works officials.

– DNO Correspondent