BUILDING ON CLAY

Oct 26, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

One night outside Sidewalk Café two men were discussing the road works that were taking place along the East Coast of Demerara. Not being experts in construction they nonetheless tried to ridicule what they presumed was the contracting filling up trenches and then having to dig it out.
If they understood that it first necessary to fill in the existing drains, have a process of settlement take place and then dig this out to allow for a firmer foundation, they could have avoided the pretence at being experts on road construction.
But that would have meant that they would have had one less reason to engage in their favorite activity of cussing out the government and trying to convince themselves that local contractors do not know what they are doing.
The soils in Guyana are difficult to deal with. And none is more difficult that the impermeable ones, including some types of clay.
It is not recommended that roads be built on clay soils. To do so would be an utter disaster. This is why most of the roads that are built along Guyana’s Coast require that land be dug up and a sub- layer of either gravel or sand placed above the soil. However when that is complete there still have to be drains built alongside the road because without these drains, the subsoil would yield under pressure.
A great deal of the confusion that is taking place over the sloth in the widening of the East Coast and East Bank Public Roads is based on a lack of understanding of the complexity of the road woks that are taking place. The widening of the roads in most places involves taking in the existing canals. The soft clay has to be dug out and then filled-in, settlement has to take place because if this is not done and there is movement within the sub soil, it will take the road with it. All of this is costly and takes time. As such there has to be patience.
But more importantly there has to be an understanding by frustrated motorists of the scope of the work that needs to be done. If this happens, the public which has to contend with slow moving traffic will be better able to appreciate why things are taking longer than expected.
There are many, of course, who question the wisdom in widening the roads. They argue that what is needed are more new roads. They may have a point but the history of Guyana has been that as new roads are built, people begin to build alongside these roads. Thus when areas along these roads become highly populated and it is necessary to link them with other new areas, there is a problem with having the space to do this.
This is also the problem with the extension of the runaway at Timehri. Squatters were allowed to reside alongside the roads that circle the aerodrome so much so that today these squatters have to be removed to allow for a longer runway.
They simply cannot be bypassed because there is a significant sunken investment at the old Atkinson Base and to build a completely new airstrip would be unaffordable at this time. However, to extend the length of the present airstrip involves removing squatters and it also involves a great deal of technical work which will also be time consuming.
Widening the roadways on the East Bank Demerara Public Road and the East Coast Public Roads have now become necessary because there has been excessive increase in economic activities and settlement along these roads. Since neither could be reversed, measures were needed to handle the increased volume in the movement of goods and persons. As such it would seem that the roads had to be widened and this would therefore cost a prohibitive sum and lead to a great many problems.
This is what many people believe. What they have missed is that there may have been a deliberate strategy to increase economic activity and human settlement in areas running along both of these main thoroughfares so as to fit into a model of development that emphasizes increased and continuing infrastructure construction, which in turn benefits a particular class which in turns supports a ruling elite.
Consider, for example, if all those housing schemes on the East Bank of Demerara were not there? Would it have been necessary to build another bridge across the Demerara River? Why does a small country like Guyana with such much land space need to have two bridges across a river? The only plausible reason is because of the manner in which economic activities and human settlement are concentrated along major roadways. Could this concentration be deliberate?

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