Users of the faulty Hope Canal Bridge on the East Coast may soon get some relief as the Ministry of Public Infrastructure yesterday announced that it will soon advertise tenders for critical repair works.
“We did an extensive report on the Hope Canal bridge, yesterday, with (the Ministry of) Finance. We decided that we would go to tender…within the next couple of days for the repairs,” Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson told a press conference yesterday.
In recent months, a particular approach to the $350M bridge has settled significantly, creating a separation from the bridge and posing traffic woes, which saw users bemoaning the condition while calling on the authorities to have it fixed as soon as possible.
“That thing got to bruk down and build back again because it just getting worse. They got to make it run straight down, not make it like how they put it so,” a resident, who uses the bridge daily, told Stabroek News earlier this month.
Patterson explained that his ministry was mulling seeking funding for the repairs in the 2017 budget but the Ministry of Finance urged that it be done now as it was an emergency.
“Obviously we don’t want to be raiding the Contingency Fund or anything like that and so forth …but we have made a case to reprogramme some of our funds to make this a priority. So we are going out to tender very shortly,” he said.
The bridge, part of a huge drainage project, was commissioned on February 15, 2014 amid much fanfare by then president Donald Ramotar.
The contract for the bridge was awarded to DIPCON Engineering Company to the tune of $349.6M. Stabroek News has been trying to contact the management of the Trinidadian-owned DIPCON over the past month for comment, to no avail.
Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder has, however, said that DIPCON had voiced reservations to the previous PPP/C government in relation to the design of the structure but the concerns were ignored by the previous Board of Directors of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority.
“The contractor apparently expressed hesitation in implementing the project. It is clear that the board disregarded these concerns and proceeded in their haste to have the project commissioned for political purposes. This is unacceptable,” the minister was quoted as saying by the Government Information Agency (GINA) in August.
Patterson, when asked yesterday if the contractor would face any penalties, said, “Not the contractor. It is quite clear, the contractor voiced his concerns. He said, ‘What we are going to build here wouldn’t work.’ And the engineers and consultants said ‘We told you what to build (now) build it.’”
Former president Ramotar had told Stabroek News that under his presidency the past board had withheld a portion of the contractor’s payment, which could have been used to repair the defects, but the current board released the funds.
