Dear Editor,
In August 2011 a Request for Proposal was issued by Mr Rickford Lowe (Coordinator, Works Service Group, Ministry of Public Works and Communications) for a Feasibility Study and Design of the East Coast Road from Better Hope to Bellfield.
I was tasked as the Design Engineer for this project by Marcel Gaskin and Associates who were in association with DIWIGmbH of Essen, Germany. This task took myself and team six months to complete.
Through a competitive bidding process China Rail (CR) was awarded a contract to construct the East Coast Road from Better Hope to Belfield, which they are presently in the process of finalizing.
Because of my past involvement in this project, I regularly drive the project length in the evening and have several times communicated my observations to those engineers at the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) who are responsible for quality control on this project.
I would like to congratulate CR for their excellent asphalt paving which in my opinion is the smoothest pavement laid in Guyana since the American contractor paved the Soesdyke/Linden highway more than fifty years ago. When new, this pavement was a joy to drive on.
Knowing CR is capable of excellent road works, I am shocked at their substandard higgledy-piggledy, up and down median curbs between Better Hope and Buxton. I would expect this well-known international contractor to construct curbs equal or better to those that grace the Northern and Western sides of the New Building Society building on Avenue of the Republic.
I trust that the MPI engineers as well as the Guyanese (Anand Dharry and Associates) and international supervision engineers (Egis Eng Ltd) insist that these curbs be re-constructed to what I would consider acceptable standards.
At 17:30 hrs. on March 19 I saw the police taking their required measurements at an accident site. There are three or four similar sites within the project area, all associated with bridges. On two previous occasions I’ve seen debris scattered on the road as a result of accidents at these bridge sites. Warnings to motorists about the hazard they are fast approaching is almost nonexistent. It’s clear to me that CR is lackadaisical about warning motorists about approaching hazards and they should adhere to traffic control recommendations made in ‘’The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices”, a document which is included in their project documents.
Incidentally, the IDB which is the loan agency for the Sherriff St. project suspended payments and the result was work by Sinohydro, the prime contractor stopped. One of the reasons cited for suspending payment was poor traffic control. It was only until the contractor cleaned up their act was permission granted to resume construction.
Yours faithfully,
Edward Gonsalves
