Residents of St Joseph are concerned about the time it is taking to complete capital projects in that rural parish.
They raised their concerns with Prime Minister Mia Mottley, her deputy Santia Bradshaw, who is also Minister of Transport and Works (MTW), and other governmental officials at a town hall meeting on Thursday night at the Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School.
One resident, Dolores Thompson, asked for a status report on Ridge Road and Fruitful Hill Road.
In response, one of the officials in charge of the project explained that work was temporarily halted because of the lack of resources to complete a gabion project that runs simultaneously with the project.
The official said that the company which supplies the stones for the gabions, had a mechanical issue with its stone crusher and until that matter was resolved the roadworks would be on pause.
Thompson also wanted an update on the works on several bridges in the area including Melvin Hill Bridge, Laynes Bridge and those at Branchbury and Airy Hill.
Senior technical officer of MTW Richard Austin said that some of those bridges were under the COMPLANT project and he was in the process of creating a short-term plan to repair them and other bridges in the Scotland District. COMPLANT is the Chinese company involved in road rehabilitation projects here.
Austin said that the safety of those bridges was a major concern, adding that in about two weeks he should be able to determine a maintenance schedule, after which teams would be deployed to repair the bridges.
Suzanne Worrell-Adamson also spoke out about the state of the roads in that parish and questioned why it was taking so long for them to be repaired.
The former MTW worker said that from 2001 to 2007 road repairs were occurring more frequently as a number of small contractors were involved in road rehabilitation programmes but the speed at which roads were being fixed across the island had slowed down.
Asked if there was a plan to use small contractors, Mottley said Bradshaw had put forward a proposal to ensure “the gap” would be filled by small contractors.
(SZB)
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