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Lack of alternative route undermining East Bank highway works – Contractor
Since 1961 a prolongation survey was conducted for the Mandela Avenue Road. This survey clearly outlined how the road could have stretched to Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara where the road turns south into
Works ongoing, as at yesterday, on the East Bank highway.
west. The recommendations of the survey were never implemented.
However, an official close to the local contracting arena said that although this was intended to be an alternative route, parallel to the East Bank Highway, it was never implemented.
“If this was long implemented it would have taken a lot of pressure off of the East Bank of Demerara roadway,” said the official.
But the need for an alternative road to the East Bank road has for years been recognised as imperative. This is in light of the fact that for a number of years road works have been ongoing on the East Bank Demerara road causing intense build-up of traffic. The official noted that there is no doubt that this situation has been impacting negatively on the process of getting the road done.
It was also revealed that in constructing a major thoroughfare such as the East Bank highway the first aspect must be to ensure that proper bridges are built. And the official pointed out that the bridges must always be a key aspect of road construction.
“You have to design bridges with a minimum life span of 30 to 40 years,” said the official who pointed out that “having done the bridges then the road can be effectively tackled.” But at this stage, the official said, that it is counterproductive to have heavy traffic traversing the very thoroughfare.
“The good bridges might have long been completed but you don’t have a service (alternative) road that you can use while you are working on this road. So you have the same traffic up and down on the road you are working on. That will impact negatively on the process of getting the road done,” the official asserted.
This state of affairs has been highlighted by quite a few officials involved in road construction.
But while those within the arena, even those tasked with supervising such projects, are well aware of the dos and don’ts in getting such road works done, the official said that supervision is usually only based on what is being paid for, that is, what the contractor is being paid for.
It was at this juncture that the official directed focus to the general construction situation in Guyana. “Once the contractor adheres to the scope of works within the recommended design, that’s it…,” divulged the official. He said that many contractors do not even take into consideration the weather that is best suited for works to be done.
“In the rainy season you look at roads and see what deterioration will take place and you mark it so that in the dry season you prepare your feasibility in relation to the project and then you put a cost to it. But what happens is, by the time the contractor has gotten a contract date he runs hard into the rainy season, and if there are no alternative access roads when the roads are completed they simply don’t last.”
Moreover, one of the big bugbears with contractors is that a lot of them bid for construction works without even knowing the locations they are tasked with working. “This is a vast country…Sometime ago I recalled having read in the newspapers where there was a big brouhaha over what was termed a sanitary block that cost $1 billion at a place named Chenapau,” said the official.
The official however explained that “a contractor may bid for a job in an area where he himself may not have visited but he figures he can do this job based on what he sees. Sometimes when he actually starts the job he is faced with the transportation cost and all of these other auxiliary prices that comes in which he has no control over.”
Sharing a hypothetical situation, the official noted that a sack of cement could cost about $1,000 to procure in Georgetown but by the time it reaches to Chenapau (Region Eight) it could cost as much as $18,000 because everything has to be done by air. That is only the cement. “When you would have gotten to the air field, you have to pay drudgers to get it down to the river, then when it gets to the river they got to get a boat to carry it further up, and then pay drudgers to get it up back the hill and to where the actual site is. This of course would add astronomically to the cost of the project,” related the well informed official.
He noted that media reporting on such issues could at times be done from an emotional standpoint and not necessarily with an understanding of the true state of affairs.
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