On the right road

LAST Monday, Works Minister Rohan Sinanan promised cheaper, more durable roads. His ministry will review its existing road maintenance strategy to include a Trinidad Lake Asphalt concrete-asphalt mix for secondary and tertiary roads.

But improving road surfaces, which deteriorated even more than normal during covid19 lockdowns, requires more than a new road-surfacing mix.

In October 2021, Mr Sinanan declared that he was fed up of a confusing network of responsibility for roads: some fall under the Works Ministry, some under the Agriculture Ministry and others under local government.

In this, he has a nation’s worth of company, as evidenced by regular reports of frustrated drivers and commuters burning tyres and debris in roads that are collapsing, potholed, threatened by landslides, undermined by leaking water lines…the list goes on.

But the fact is, at present the law empowers specific agencies with different responsibilities for the maintenance of roads. Until legislation is changed, the order of business must proceed along those paths, as bumpy and unsatisfactory as they have proven.

The new Secondary Road Rehabilitation and Improvement Company, a state agency tasked with managing road infrastructure monitoring and repair, joins the Highways Division and the Programme for Upgrading Roads Efficiency in delivering design and construction capacity for the roads for which the government is responsible.

Will these services be extended to municipalities which continually complain of inadequate funding for the repair and maintenance works they are expected to deliver to their communities?

The primary mandate of the Works Ministry in managing the country’s road systems is to plan, execute and maintain the major roads.

According to its current strategy, the ministry’s road refurbishment programme will begin with 25 contractors and add 24 in a second phase. The new road improvement agency has been robustly funded with $100 million to start, with another tranche of $100 million to come in 2023. The Works Ministry received $250 million in loan financing for this programme.

A further complication in road maintenance and repair is that it continues to be plagued by miscommunication between the Works Ministry and WASA, which far too often leaves freshly paved roads in disrepair by digging them up to deal with leaking mains.

With the UWI St Augustine and Lake Asphalt TT supporting this new drive and contributing their expertise to this refreshed approach to integrated road maintenance, the public is entitled to expect a dramatic increase in quality and timely, lasting repairs.

Let’s hope that in this latest initiative, the Works Ministry and the new road rehabilitation agency can establish themselves as a government model for service delivery while insisting on value for money invested. That is, that roads will be better built and more rapidly and durably repaired when they need it.