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Bartica-Puruni road a death trap for vehicles
…MMC commences repair works
Mekdeci Machinery and Construction (MMC) yesterday began fixing impassable roads between Bartica and Puruni , even as miners and business persons complain of heavy losses and damage to their vehicles.
The miners and business persons are also complaining that Mekdeci charges them for using the ferry even when they are not using it.
The company is not denying these charges, but Colonel (retired) Carl Morgan, the Chief Executive at MMC, has said the extra charges are for fixing roads and bridges for which they do not have a contract from the government. Most of all the company uses the money to maintain the ferry.
Truckers battle the horrors of the Bartica-Puruni road
There was no contract last year, causing the road to deteriorate to the state it is in now.
MMC is contracted by the government to repair roads leading to interior ferry services, which it operates. Currently, the company charges $9,000 for a cruiser and $32,000 for a truck to cross with the ferry to Itaballi on the left bank of the Mazaruni River, about eight miles upriver.
“We are totally fed up,” complained Judith David, a Member of Parliament and businesswoman from Bartica.
David said that Land Cruisers usually have to be extricated by large trucks. They would sink to the cab in the mire. One Land Cruiser, during the attempt to extricate it, had its differential dragged out with wheel and all.
It had to be eventually hoisted onto a truck and brought out for repairs.
She said that it would usually take less than three hours to get from Itaballi to the Puruni junction – a journey of about 95 kilometres. But now that journey takes almost three days. She said this has been the case for the past five months.
At an area called Bamboo, some 30 trucks were left stranded because of the state of the road. David said this is resulting in severe losses.
“It affects all the miners,” she told Kaieteur News. “We take in fuel, ration and everything that you need in the interior. People have to use up all their meat and greens on the road – cook it and eat it out on the road because they can’t move,” she lamented.
But David said miners and businessmen are further peeved by extra costs they have to pay.
She explained that if the trucks and Land Cruisers cross over to Itaballi, they are charged the regular crossing fee. But she said in some cases, some of the trucks would come out back to Itaballi, load up and head back into the interior. She said they would still have to pay even though they did not use the ferry.
Colonel Morgan explained that even if the miners don’t use the ferry again, once they come back to Itaballi and load up and use the road again, the ferry fee is tallied to the road users as a “road use” charge.
He said that money goes into fixing roads and bridges for which the company is not contracted to rehabilitate.
For example, he said fixing the severely damaged part of the road at Bamboo would involve clearly other parts of the road so as to get the material to the spot where works have to be done. This additional work is not catered for in the contract to the company.
He said that his company is not contracted to repair the road between Rockstone and Teperu but it must. “We also repaired the stretch between Bartica and Teperu for which there is no contract.”
Mekdeci Holdings also repairs the various bridges at a cost to the company. “It is as if the money collected is going into a bottomless pit.”
David wants the government to pay more attention to these interior roads given that the mining sector is an important sector in the country.
“Gold production is more than rice and sugar combined and we’re not being treated as how rice farmers and sugar workers are treated. We are played down and suppressed by the government,” David stated.
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