Government has intensified its road repair efforts across the island.
In fact, Minister of Transport, Works and Maintenance, Dr. William Duguid, disclosed that major work along High-way 1 will start very soon.
He said that the work along the West Coast will stretch from the roundabout at the bottom of University Hill, St. Michael to Holetown in St. James, with an anticipated completion time of six months.
“What I can tell you is that we have already issued some letters of invitation for contractors to come back to us to do Highway 1,” he disclosed to members of the media after inspecting the work currently under way at Rendezvous Hill.
Dr. Duguid went on to describe that particular road network as “complex”, explaining: “In addition, what we are having to do is take out all of the water mains and we are adding another set of natural gas mains there. So that means trenching and that trenching is going to take us some time.”
“We will talk the country through it because there will be diversions, but we are going to try to do the majority of the work at night, which means that the inconvenience will be reduced. We will have four points of entry coming onto it... We are also looking if possible to get all the electrical infrastructure underground as well, because that means it enhances our hurricane resilience.”
Once Highway 1 is finished, the Minister said that they will move onto Highway 7. He further disclosed that work has started on Wildey Road from the gas station to Bishops Court Hill, and also on the cards are Two Mile Hill, Green Hill, Fairfield, Deacons and Highway 2A.
“For ten years very few roads were done in Barbados and we are now playing catch up… The Prime Minister has been very kind to us giving us some money to work with, and we are going to stretch that money as far as we can to get as many roads done as quickly as we can,” the Minister assured. (TL)