As persons anxiously await the opening of the Berbice River Bridge, to light vehicular traffic this morning, workers of Dipcon were yesterday adding the finishing touches to make the eastern approach “drivable.”
When this newspaper visited the site it was raining heavily. Workers of Dipcon Contracting Company were removing grade ‘C’ crusher run at the Palmyra end and replacing it with ‘A’ grade crusher run to make the road more compact.
Over at Crab Island some of the workers warned this reporter to be careful in case “you sink down in the soft mud up to yuh knees”. There also they were planning to replace the soppy substance with the ‘A’ grade crusher run.
It was observed that immediately after the section where the crusher-run was applied at Palmyra, there was one lane of asphalt up to a point. This continued with a section of reef sand only. At the Crab Island end, two lanes of asphalt were in place, just before the muddy approach.
Meantime, the workers said while they were trying their best to make the road accessible to the public for today it would cause a setback.
“They [authorities] are trying to force the bridge to open and if they want the road we would give them the road. But the vehicles would only damage the road especially in all this rain. When the vehicles running how the work would continue?” they questioned.
One worker said they could have done a lot more work on the road had it not been for the rainy season that started during the critical stage of the construction.
“When we get two hours of rain even six hours of sun can’t dry out the place fast enough for us to work. In fact, we didn’t even get that much sun in one day,” a worker lamented.
When this newspaper contacted an official by telephone yesterday evening he was quite optimistic that the opening was “looking possible by every hour.”
He said the “weather hold up and we already applied the crusher run [at Crab Island].” He said too that if the weather is in their favour they would start paving early this morning, assuring that it would be dried and ready to use shortly after the asphalt is applied.
The official admitted that they are “bending a little” in their effort to actually force the road to be ready in time for today’s opening “but what can we do? We had to do it.”
