Borough considers shutting down work

The Arima Borough Corporation is considering shutting down work being done by the Chinese company, Sinohydro on the construction of the Malabar Wastewater Treatment Plant in frustration over the company’s failure to properly resurface parts of O’Meara Road, a major thoroughfare into and out of Arima, and other streets after its nightly excavations.

The Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) says it is looking into the borough corporation’s complaints about the deterioration of O’Meara Road because of the poor quality of the patching being done by the contractors.

The contractors do most of the work in the evenings or at night to minimise traffic disruption and are expected to do temporary restoration of the roadway so that it can be used by motorists during the day.

WASA Corporate Communications Manager, Daniel Plenty, said the condition of the road is an issue the authority will have to address with the contractor. The poor patching work on O’Meara Road and the roads in the nearby O’Meara Industrial Park and surrounding area which are being dug up to lay the pipelines for the wastewater project has been one of the major issues at successive statutory meetings of the corporation with councillors complaining that the contractors, has been doing a poor job of restoring the road surface after excavations. The subject was raised again at last Tuesday’s Statutory meeting and Mayor Lisa Morris-Julian said the temporary restoration of the road surface done by the contractors “was not good enough.”

The mayor said she instructed the Town Superintendent to shut down the pipe laying contract if the contractor could not do a better job of restoring the road surface. She said that she had received many assurances from the contractor that they were trying their best to patch the roadway after digging up various places to lay their pipelines, adding that, “They try, but we must agree that their best is not good enough.”

Deputy Mayor Cagney Casimire said the mayor had a meeting with WASA and the contractor “and got from the contractor certain commitments to improve the restoration of the roads.” He said while there had been some improvement it had not met the expectations of the council. He said, “we also want them to clear the drains that they have silted,” because some of the side drains which had been filled with silt had caused serious flooding during the recent heavy rains. “So we are asking them to improve their methods of restoration, reparation and also of putting temporary restoration on the roads there.”