By Sue-Ann Wayow
WHEN the rain stops, citizens should expect to see massive roadworks taking place throughout the country.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley gave this assurance on Sunday at the People’s National Movement (PNM) National Women’s League annual general meeting held in San Fernando.
“As soon as these rains stop falling, you will see significant activity with respect to road reinstatement,” he said.
Speaking from his geologist point of view, Dr Rowley with the consistent rainfall this year, south Trinidad has been “softened” because of its variety of clay soils and would experience many landslides.
The north coast road in Tobago was also the same he said.
Dr Rowley said, “There are people who in the dry season, in south in particular, they go and build all about where in the rainy season, those are the areas where the overflow is going to go. We have not abandoned those situations.”
The Prime Minister admitted that the road development programme was not a major priority by his government as should have been.
“Now we are moving unto that,” Dr Rowley said.
He said Lake Asphalt was no longer a profitable company that was relying on Petrotrin to survive.
Now that Petrotrin was restructured, Lake Asphalt needed to adjust to become profitable.
Dr Rowley said, “The Ministry of Finance has made money available to Lake Asphalt to create a product where we use some imported bitumen with some material from the (pitch) lake creating a product of good enough quality to support the road reinstatement programme that we are embarking upon.”
In July, it was revealed that Lake Asphalt would receive a monthly subvention of $2.5 million and $30 million annually from the Ministry of Works and Transport.
