Too few capable contractors – Minister Patterson

A fitting name: This was the state of the avenue along Waterloo Street on Thursday after the heavy rain. It caused water to spill onto the road opposite Water Chris. The internal drains on several avenues in downtown Georgetown are either not functioning or have sunk. Once flooded they take days to drain, damaging trees and leaving foetid water. Shouldn’t the city be doing something about these avenues?

Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson says there are too few capable contractors in the Ministry’s system and increased capacity is needed in this area.

Giving the feature address on Thursday at the Ministry’s year-end review, Patterson said that one of the major challenges that the Ministry faced throughout the year was the fact that there was a lack of capable contractors.

“We are still facing the fact that we have too few capable contractors in the system who urgently need to increase that capacity,” Patterson said, while explaining that because of the lack of capacity, large contracts for roads and sea defence projects are often tendered out to a small portion of contractors.